Secrets from My Submissions Inbox

I’m going to tell you a secret, direct from my submissions inbox:

There are four reasons I turn submissions down which come up over and over again.

They are:

1. I do not represent the genre

2. It’s not clear what the book is about

3. The pitch is generic and doesn’t stand out

4. The writing isn’t strong enough

Number 1 you cannot fix; I am just not the right agent for your book (which is why it’s key to check submissions guidelines before you query, which would tell you that I will never take on a fantasy novel, no matter how brilliant it is).

But the other three – which cover probably 95% of my inbox – you can work on. Here’s how.

I’m going to caveat here that there is unavoidably a layer of subjectivity to all of this. I have offered on books where I was the only agent offering, and so has every other agent I know. Sometimes what I think is a fairly generic pitch will feel special to an agent who has a vision for that specific novel, or what one agent thinks is unimaginative writing will feel sparky and well-crafted to another. We are all just readers, trying to find books we love. But if you can make your cover letter clear and precise, your pitch specific and intriguing, and polish your writing as much as you can, you will put yourself in the best possible position to find that agent who will share your vision and believe in your book.

There are some authors who send no covering letter at all – just a ‘I’d like you to consider my manuscript, kind regards’. This will save you lots of time querying, but it is also doing you and your manuscript a huge disservice! Let’s say the agent still dips into your opening pages – now they’re going to be focusing on working out what the book is, and not whether they’re the right agent for it. You are also missing the opportunity to tell the agent your vision for the book and to show them that it is immensely pitchable and saleable – which is, after all, what you are trying to convince the agent they will be able to do.

But even when there is a comprehensive covering letter attached, it’s incredibly common for it not to really tell me what the book is about at all. That might be because the comp titles are wildly different from one another and the author hasn’t explained what themes or tone they believe their novel shares with those comps, so it’s impossible to see how the comps work together at all. It might be because the pitch of the book is vague, and tells only the set-up – that the book is set in a 1920s boarding school as 15-year-old Jemma joins and struggles to make friends – but not the actual hook of the story.

This is what I want to know: Why this book? Why this story? Why does it start here? Why does it matter? What is the story actually about? Jemma’s first year at boarding school could be entirely uneventful, for all I know, or completely generic in her struggles to fit in – but you have written a whole novel about it, which suggests there should be something unique and interesting here.

If I don’t get that from your letter, I’ll turn to the sample chapters, and hope that in the first page or two, it will become clear what kind of book this is and what kind of thing I’m waiting for. I’m not saying your inciting incident has to be on page one – but I want to feel confident, from the very first page, that something is going to happen. If Jemma turns up at her new school and there’s a mysterious wing of the building that students are forbidden from entering, then we have a promise that there’s something going on here. If she turns up and is a bit nervous and the other students all seem to have friendships already and she doesn’t know how she’ll fit in – that could be any new student at any boarding school, and it promises me nothing.

If the opening pages don’t pull me in, this is where I might1 skim the synopsis, to check I’m not missing anything.

Here is a particular pet peeve: the synopsis starts with something completely different to the opening of the novel! This happens surprisingly often and yet I find it entirely baffling every time. If your letter didn’t tell me what your novel was about, and the opening pages haven’t promised anything exciting is going to happen, and then the synopsis sounds like a completely different book – I am out. Really, by the time I am looking at your synopsis, unless it makes it clear that things kick off in a really interesting way very soon – and that there is a clear and unique premise in your novel which just hasn’t been captured in the letter and opening pages – then I am out.

Variations of this come into my inbox every day. I am not going to claim that writing a submissions package, or the opening chapters of a novel, are easy. But if your package doesn’t tell agents clearly what the novel is, and it’s not obvious from the opening chapters what readers have in store, then you’re unlikely to get a good agent response.