To the Query Trenches! (And Why I'm Sticking With Trad)

I flinch as another rejection flies in, spewing shrapnel and dirt. I loved your voice but didn’t connect with…

‘Pay it no heed. You’ll get worse than that while you’re here.’

‘Listen to him,’ says another. ‘A true veteran. Queried a dozen novels.’

‘And an anthology,’ the first cuts it. ‘Not sure what I was thinking with that one.’

‘Aye, and an anthology. He knows what he’s about, kid. Stick with him.’

‘I got close once, you know. Saw the whites of their eyes. Multiple full requests. Even had a call; they never got back to me.’

‘Just gotta keep trying. Alright, that’s the whistle. Form up: over we go.’

‘Good luck,’ I manage.

‘And to you, kid. You’ll need it.’

I’m querying a novel!

Querying is the worst part of writing, we all know that. A time of excitement and anxiety that mostly leads to a crickets and maybe, if you’re lucky, a voice or two calling through the night. (And that voice is but the first step on a much longer journey.)

Nonetheless, if you want to publish traditionally and don’t have any way to circumvent it, it’s a necessity. And, given structural forces in the industry, I don’t really see a better way of doing things, sadly.1 So, the best we can do is hold our noses, write the best query we can, and dive in.

Today, I’d like to discuss why I personally chose to go this route (as opposed to self-publication or throwing my manuscript into the ocean where at least the dolphins might enjoy it), my approach and experience, and share a little about this particular novel.

Why Go Traditional?

Because, of course, this isn’t the only option. Indie pub has proven itself viable for many writers, after all. Substack — this very platform — is used by many of them. I myself independently publish all my short fiction to this here substack, making branching out into self-published novels a natural extension. Why, then, am I so insistent on trying to get this novel published traditionally?

Well, novels and short stories are very different in the market today. I write fantasy, which effectively began in the short story magazines, most importantly with Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories. For decades, fantasy and its cousin sci-fi were built around the magazines. They sold well and, if you wanted to publish a novel, you were expected to first publish short fiction to prove you had what it takes.

But then the magazines died. I’m no expert as to why. The rise of the paperback led to a rise in novel reading and decline in short story reading. Epic fantasy’s dominance in the 1980s changed the default format of fantasy from short fiction to incredibly long fiction. Comic books fulfilled the same storytelling niche of recurring characters having adventures, directed at a similar demographic. Maybe a small family of pixies played their part too.

Whatever the reasons, most readers today pick up novels almost exclusively. The result of that is that the magazines died and those that continue have a shoestring budget and languishing sales. The whole industry is a bit of a closed circuit, with the people who read short fiction being the same people who write it. With no money, few readers, and an avalanche of submissions, the remaining markets struggle to cope. They can’t pay much and do whatever they can to limit submissions: no simultaneous submissions is an industry standard despite being (as far as I’m concerned) absurd, and many have simply closed open submissions altogether.

Knowing that I was writing short fiction faster that it could be published (even if anyone wanted to publish it), that the publishing process was an incredible hassle, that I wouldn’t make any money from it anyway, and that the audiences would be tiny, I decided to go another way. And I’m glad I did! In a year of doing whatever this is, I’ve built an audience in the hundreds and have released 18 short stories along with 14 non-fiction articles. Frankly, the advantages to traditional publication for short fiction are very small, mostly adding up to the possibility of awards and a bit of pocket money.

Without wanting to rain on anyone’s parade, the basic problem here is structural and so will also plague substack-native attempts at the same thing. All those subscribers substack short fiction magazines get before they’ve even published a single story? They’re not eager readers proving a fertile market, they’re writers gearing up to flood another submissions box. Practices like charging for faster replies or editorial notes shows that they themselves know their best chance to make money is from desperate writers.

In contrast, however, the traditional novel publication industry. Lots of people still read novels and, as a result, that industry is completely different, making a very different comparison to self-pub.

The industry publishes a huge number of novels each year — in proportional comparison, novels are much more likely to be picked up than short stories. Traditional publication is usually the only way to get a book on a large number of physical shelves, which is still where a huge number of novels are bought. (In general, traditionally published novels still usually sell many more copies than self-published ones, and do so much more reliably.) And a traditionally published novel is guaranteed to make money for the writer in the form of an advance, even if (as is likely) it never earns out.

Beyond all that, traditionally published books receive professional editing, which an indie writer has to pay for out of pocket, likely leaving them in the red on the whole project. And, while writers of all stripes have to do a lot of their own publicity, indie writers are left without even that small amount of support that a traditional publisher can give. (Contact with a publicist, blurbing, and promotion through their own channels being, as far as I can see, the big ones, along with the basic publicity of physical books on physical shelves.)

None of which is to say that self-pub is a bad option. If you’re writing in a format that the traditional industry doesn’t really deal with, for example if you’re serialising or writing a novella every few months rather than a novel every year. If you’re writing a genre that is big in indie but less so in traditional, like progression fantasy, litRPG, or erotica. If you have a large audience already, and thereby guaranteed sales. These in particular are all great reasons to go indie, and I’m sure there are many besides.

(There are also, I’ll add, very bad reasons to choose indie. Using indie as a fallback for a rejected novel is, in my opinion, usually a bad idea, in particular if you haven’t made an honest appraisal of why the novel was rejected and what work it might genuinely still need. Fears over creative control are, from what I’ve seen, usually unfounded. Also, having a general chip on your shoulder about the industry, an ill-defined resentment possibly stemming from political notions, should perhaps lead to introspection rather than seizing upon indie like some kind of literary messiah come to deliver the hammer of judgement on the big bad industry.)

All of which is to say that, for me, writing novels that fit very comfortably within what is getting published today and without that large audience, I’ve only ever seriously considered traditional publication. The pros just blow the cons out of the water, at least at the moment and at least for me. Ultimately, I think all writers right now should be looking at every project individually and critically assessing where it would best succeed.2 We should all be hybrid in our mentality, even if we mostly skew in a particular direction.

My Journey

This is the second novel I’ve completed. The first is now very much shelved but, after I’d finished editing it, I did briefly query it to a few agents. On reflection, the book wasn’t very good. It suffered from so many first novel problems, in particular my desire to shove in every thought I’ve ever had along with major structural problems. It was too episodic and the pacing was all over the place. Also, I didn’t really understand the industry or the querying process. My query letter — oh how I cringe now — discussed what I thought was important about the book, which was its themes and inspirations, rather than what an agent would think is important, which is what happens and whether they can sell it.

So, of course, I got nothing but a few form rejections. We live and learn. What doesn’t kill us makes us look around sheepishly hoping no-one was watching.

After that experience, I sat back and had a think. I enjoyed writing, I decided. I’d do it for the rest of my life, whether or not anyone was reading it; whether or not I ever got published. And, if I spent the next decade writing decent quality novels and querying each of them, I figured that someone would give me the time of day eventually3. I was fine with that, I decided.

But also, this is an industry. Yes it’s art, but it’s also money, and it works best when the two can be made congruent. My first novel was weird. I like writing weird stuff. But I don’t only like writing weird stuff. So perhaps I could skew my writing towards the overlap in the Venn diagram between what I enjoy and what other people want to read (and publish).

When planning my second novel, then, a few thoughts went around my head. I wanted something that fit more comfortably within what is being published today. I identified political intrigue fantasy as a niche that I love and is very popular. Also, I wanted something stand alone but with the potential for sequels, both because agents and editors seem to like that kind of thing but also because it would give me flexibility. Also also, I wanted to further explore this fantasy setting I’d been building out for years.

The idea I developed was this: a novel about a young diplomat (with lots of room for character development) being thrust into a foreign court full of juicy intrigue, which after outlining I decided I could keep at or under 100,000 words. (By contrast, my first came in at 130,000, a length that puts many agents off.) I had a strong idea for the book’s plot and, while that plot was stand alone, it left open the option of sequels in which the same character travels to other courts on different diplomatic assignments. (And, because I’m an outliner and planner at heart, yes I do already know what those would be.)

So I outlined it and wrote it and let people read it (shout out to , one of those people) and edited it and edited it and edited it, and here we are. During the editing process, I wrote and revised my query letter and synopsis, and found they actually helped me hone in on the core of the story, which was incredibly helpful during later revision.

I found almost all the agents I’m querying through querytracker. At the end of that process, I ended up with a little shy of forty agents representing fantasy and based in the UK with whom I think my project might fit. As of this week, I started sending out my query to them.

Now, we wait. (And in the meantime, I’ll be researching and outlining the sequel.4)

The Novel

This section is intended for those curious about what I’ve written — both the novel and how I’m trying to pitch it. But, also, on the off-chance that you’re a literary agent who represents adult fantasy and is looking to expand their list, consider this an open query.

Complete at 100,000 words, DIPLOMAT’S GAMBIT is an adult fantasy, stand alone with the potential for sequels. Taking place in a setting inspired by Georgian Britain (which will be familiar to readers of my short fiction), it will appeal to fans of the political intrigue and character driven storytelling of Seth Dickson’s The Traitor Baru Cormorant5 and Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire.

Mikhail Trubitskoy is a carouser, perfectly at ease wasting away his years drinking and gambling to his heart’s content. A disappointment to his father and reckless spender of the overbearing old man’s money. That is, until one night he is challenged to a duel – quite the overreaction to a little good-natured ribbing – shot, and almost killed. For his family, it’s the last straw. A profession will force him to get a hold of himself, his father decides. Mikhail chooses the least objectionable option: he becomes a diplomat.

The romance of it! Or perhaps not, as he’s immediately sent to a volatile mess of a kingdom. Lacking a king, after the last one got himself killed, and at war with their neighbour, who they accuse of orchestrating the regicide. Yet, if the killer can be found, the whole knot might be unravelled. A shame no-one’s seen the man since that fateful day. Mikhail, in a desperate bid to prove he’s not the empty-headed libertine everyone seems to believe, resolves to be the first.

With the help of his local valet, a lovelorn aristocrat, and a rather fetching ambassador’s daughter, Mikhail sketches out the outlines of a conspiracy. But with every step, the ground shifts underfoot and, if he slips, he’ll be sent home in disgrace, forever the family disappointment. That won’t happen. It can’t. He will outmanoeuvre politicians, uncover a murder, survive an assassination, unmask a conspiracy, flirt with romance, and end a war. And maybe, by the end of it all, he’ll have even made something of himself.

Sounds good, right? It’s got some really crunchy political intrigue, a central mystery driving the plot, and a whole heap of character. To blatantly toot my own horn, I really love the dialogue in this thing, in particular. Oh, and the formal balls! It’s got three set-piece balls each taking up a whole chapter where all the characters get to gather and scheme and flirt and generally make mischief. Love those things. Major inspirations are War and Peace, the Aubrey-Maturin novels by Patrick O’Brian, and Robin Hobb’s Fitz books. I hope you get to read it someday.

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I’ve been rereading Rousseau’s Confessions, an episode of which is the inspiration behind my next short story, releasing in two weeks. It roughly depicts the story of what Rousseau calls the worst thing he ever did, from the perspective of its victim. Two weeks after that, I think I’ll be indulging my French Revolutionary fascination again and discussing every constitution France instituted between 1789 and 1799. Did you know they had four in that brief period!?!

If you’re looking for a story recommendation, this piece of epistolary fiction is set in the same city as the novel, though two decades later:

Don’t know where to continue with my writing? This might help: