Questions.

Hi friends! It’s been a couple of weeks since I published a blog post. In fact, you may have missed my last post, because I didn’t promote it on social media. My grandfather passed away a couple weeks ago, and it felt wrong to post about my blog during that time. 

It was also just tough to be creative, so I took a couple of weeks off. But I received two really good questions from a friend of mine, so it felt like the perfect time to dive back in. She asked:

My question is, when you finish your next masterpiece will it get sent to the same agents as the first book? Also what happens if you resend your current book and put it on the “top of the pile”?

The easy answer to her first question is: it depends. 

Ideally, I’d like to find a career agent, which means that I would find someone who wants to represent all of my books, current and future, and not just Veritas. However, since the second novel I’m drafting is a completely different genre (and I have ideas for a few other genres), it’s possible that the agent I find to represent Veritas won’t want to represent the next one. Or the one after that. It also depends on the success of Veritas. If it were to become incredibly successful, then the agent would hopefully want to stick around for the next one. But there’s always the likelihood that the agent and I part ways after the first book.

I also could potentially see Veritas doing well as a series, even though it’s currently written as a standalone. (I have many ideas in case an agent or publisher wants more of the story.) If an agent also saw series potential, then hopefully they would want to represent the full series. 

But if for whatever reason, I found an agent who only wanted to represent Veritas and not my second novel, then yes. I would need to find another agent for that story. In that case, the query process would start all over, which isn’t ideal, but by that point I would have some official writing credentials under my belt, so maybe that would help!

As far as submitting Veritas again in order to put it on the “top of the pile,” that also depends. Some agents ask that if you don’t hear from them not to reach back out. Since they receive so many queries every day, it would do more harm than good to send them multiple emails with the same query letter and sample chapter. (And you don’t want to burn bridges.) Occasionally, some agents will say that if several years have passed and you’ve made significant changes to your manuscript, you can submit again. 

However, I don’t currently plan to pitch the same manuscript to agents I’ve already queried.

Sometimes after you’ve received a rejection, that means that if there’s another agent at that same agency who might be a good fit, you are allowed to query them. On the flip side, for some literary agencies, if it’s a “no” from one agent, it’s a “no” from the whole agency. 

Most agencies will have these querying requirements listed on their website, and many will give you a time frame about how soon you would hear from an agent if they were interested. But something that is common at most of them is that you should only query one agent per agency at a time. You can query agents from different agencies all at once, but not if they work for the same literary agency. 

However, if I had a finished, polished draft of my second novel, I could re-query any agents I’ve already queried for Veritas because it would be a completely new query letter and new sample pages. 

Many authors write several novels before they find an agent, and oftentimes, their debut novel isn’t the first book that they wrote. It could be their third or fourth. It’s very possible that I will have to temporarily shelve Veritas and pitch something else to agents. That’s why it’s important to me to keep writing while I am in the querying stage. I always want to have something I’m working on in case what I’m doing isn’t working, and I need to try something else.

I hope that helps answer the questions above, and of course, if that sparks any more questions, feel free to reach out to me! Questions are a great starting point for a post, and I love that you guys have been so interested in this part of the writing and publishing process.

Just a heads up, I am only going to have one blog post this week, as I’m attending a writing conference the last half of the week. But I’m so excited to give you all a recap afterward. I’ve been reviewing the conference schedule and picking out the sessions I want to attend, and I can already tell that I am going learn so much. 

I can’t wait to share it with you all!