Timing Your Submission: When to Query Agents and Publishers
With Your Writing
By Mary Kole
Mary Kole is a former literary agent, freelance editor, writing teacher, author of Writing Irresistible Kidlit, and IP developer for major publishers, with over a decade in the publishing industry.
Writers want to nail their submissions to literary agents and publishing houses, and they often wonder when to query in terms of the calendar year—as if gaming the timing of a submission will unlock success. (Spoiler alert: It does not.) The best you can do to send off a solid submission is to do your literary agent research and check individual submission guidelines before sending queries or submission packages. When to query is definitely a consideration, but not the primary one. Still, there are a few times of the year that you want to avoid, so read on.
Deciding When to Query: You Can’t Control Every Variable
Agents and publishers sometimes open and close submissions on (it seems) a whim, so it pays to stay aware and remain flexible. You might put together the perfect submission list, only to realize that your dream agent has gone on leave. Frustratingly, the question of when to query might be taken out of your hands at the last minute. If this happens, you can either wait to query that specific person until they’re open again, or skip them for that particular submission round.
While you can’t control every variable, there is one period you need to avoid if you’re wondering when to query. I suggest you categorically avoid the time between Thanksgiving and the second week of January, as this is generally considered a bad time for submission. Many writing agents or publishers are on leave, catching up on other work, or officially closed to submissions at this point of the year. It's wise to consider striking January's first few weeks off your "when to query" list, even if you’re chomping at the bit to get going. This is when everyone's just getting back into the groove and agents are busy pitching projects they held off on over the holidays and lots of publishing business is taking place behind the scenes as publishers feel pressure to pack the new year with acquisitions. You won’t really get anyone’s full attention.
The end of summer has also historically been usually slow in publishing, but this is less and less true these days. But the truth is, you could truly drive yourself bonkers if you spend too much time wondering when to query, as there are publishing trade show events year round that send agents and publishers out of the office. Consider events like Bologna (children’s books), the London Book Fair, and Frankfurt. Editors and agents won’t be sitting at their inboxes during these periods. And don’t forget about the ALA conferences, Digital Book World … the list goes on and on. During the pandemic, the timing of events became a bit unpredictable, and those aftershocks are still being felt as dates seem to change every year. It is still important to stay aware of them, if you care to get into such a granular view of the calendar.
Deciding When to Query: Progress, Not Perfection
The short answer of when to query is … whenever you’re ready (but not during the winter holidays). Other than that, you can’t predict who’s open, who’s sick, who’s traveling, who’s speaking at writing conferences, and who’s just simply overworked and running a very slow response time.
If you find yourself with some downtime leading up to a submission blackout period, or you decide to wait until your favorite agent is open to submissions again, there are things you can do with your time. Brainstorming book ideas for the future, doing self-editing polishes on existing manuscripts, and reading like a writer (selecting both inside and outside of your genre and category) can all help make you a stronger candidate when it is time to submit again.
In a big picture sense of when to query, you should just query when you are ready to query (outside of late November to early January) and then the rest is out of your hands. You could send off a submission and the next day the person you sent it to could break their arm or be spurred into action with 15 shots of espresso and race through their slush pile. There's really no way to know what will become of a submission once it's out in the world. The best way to ensure success isn't trying to unlock the secret code of when to query, but to write a great project and craft an amazing book pitch.
Click here to purchase Successful Query Letters, my book on query letters, including over forty examples with comprehensive notes on each one. There’s a ton of submission advice, best practices, and insider information in these pages, and you’ll really enjoy seeing what other writers are doing in the slush.