Episode 47: How to be Successful at Querying
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Hello, my beautiful cinnabar moths or any kind of moth you’d like to be. Welcome to the writers triangle, a podcast about publishing and all things books. And this week, we’re going to talk about how to survive querying. So a couple of weeks ago, I talked about how to get published. And querying is a big part of how to get published. And the first step in clearing I find, that a lot of authors struggle with, is getting past the fear of rejection and getting to that place where they felt worthy enough to submit. And I encourage everybody to submit and submit often, whether it’s short stories, flash fiction, poetry, whatever you’re writing novellas long form short form, every kind of form of writing, there’s some place that wanted and submit, submit often, because it’s the law of averages, right? The more you submit, the more likely you are to be published and to be accepted. And a big part of submitting and knowing who to submit to is a throwback and a call back to the previous episode when I was talking about publication. And that’s doing your research about any magazine or publishing house that you want to submit to getting to know what do they publish, getting to know, the authors that they published, and getting that in before you submit can be really helpful. I personally really, really enjoy publishing first time authors. It’s a thrill of mine, I find it exhilarating and exciting to be the first place that takes an author from work for some authors, if they haven’t been paid, they consider themselves to be hobbyist writers. For some authors, if they haven’t been published, they consider themselves to be hobbyist writers. That’s not my opinion. But it has been shared with me that that’s the opinion a lot of authors have about themselves. Because really exciting for me to take an author that’s never been published and publish them for the first time. That’s super exhilarating. I absolutely love it. It’s so much fun. Their excitement is so contagious, and their positivity just completely feeds me it does I, I admit it. It’s thrilling. And I, I love it. So it’s a little bit selfish on my part that I really enjoy. First time authors. I also really enjoy established authors as well, I find that established authors tend to be really specific about who they submit to and make sure that every sub called really fits them well. I’m not just comes with the more seasoned hand. The reason I’m talking about enjoying first time authors because I’m not the only publisher with that mentality. And I’m definitely not the only magazine producer. With that mentality. I’d like to give a shout out to Bear Creek which is just an awesome magazine we have in an episode with them. If you look back down into our podcast catalog, and also Pope modern and we have a an episode are talking with them as well as another great zine. Both of them are just really ethical and really good people the owners are and the magazine’s treat authors really well unfairly. So I think that looking at if you want to know like good zines, shameless self promotion, follow us on Twitter and check out the ziens that we follow. And you can just click our follow lists and look at all of the wonderful, we have so many really great magazines that we follow that are all really great with with open subs, and we do our best to promote others zines, open submission calls, our submissions are pretty much closed right now and will be for the foreseeable future, because I find it more rewarding to top writers that I have a personal relationship on social media with that I’ve been communicating with and ask them to write a custom made short story for us. And that’s basically what I’ve been doing, for the most part for a zine. But I think in 2023, we’ll start doing some open calls. Again, looking at the authors that we published, get to know them, follow them and they can also give you leads on where they’re publishing and their experiences with with different different processes and different ziens. I think that’s really, really important. And also how they got published. What was their approach? Did they DM did they email? Did they respond to a pin tweet, did they respond to an Instagram post? What was their approach and get, get that feedback on that loop? And that info Meishan of how to make the first approach did they do a query letter did they not do a query letter, I don’t require query letters.
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So I have a whole podcast episode on query letters, that you can scroll back to our our back episodes and, and get my views on on pre letters and my tips and tricks for that in terms of if you’re submitting to us. And they’re also good for other presses. I do think being active on social media really helps a lot with getting to know presses and getting to know authors, and really helps a lot with with knowing where to submit and where the you know, where the iron is hot, because you can put submissions into any search engine, into any search thing, search bar, I guess it’s called on on any platform, and have all of the posts with that word, and enter all of the posts with that hashtag in it. And you can also do like open call and look at the different languages that that magazines are using, when they’re an open call, or when there’s a contest, or those types of things, and start familiarizing yourself with what people are calling. They’re open times when they’re open to anyone sending a piece and that meets their guidelines. I think that’s really important. And there are so many specialty ziens out there now that I really dig. So some scenes are publishing purely based on identity, some ziens are publishing on a theme. And some things are just open when they’re open and closed when they’re closed. So knowing the ebb and flow of magazines, if you’re a short story writer, or flash fiction writer is going to be really important. And they’re also the same type of windows opening and closing for novellas. Some ziens do publish are purely novella zines. But if you’re writing anything that’s not full length novel, getting to know those rhythms is going to be really important to boost your confidence, on submission, getting to know someone having a personal relationship and asking that person can I submit to you, we’ll help you have the most gentle submission process possible. And I’ll be very honest, that if you get to know me on social media, and you ask, Hey, can you look over something, I may not be able to look over it like fast. But usually I will be able to look over any piece of writing within a six month window. That’s just the ebb and flow for me with because I’m also doing reading for the press for our authors that were publishing and organizing things on that in that if you get to know me, I’m more than happy to put eyes on something for you, you know, look at the first three chapters of something or read a short story and give you my my thoughts and feelings in a very respectful and gentle way. My feedback always comes with a mix of of positivity and improvement. There are some things that I’m just my whole thing is I love it. I just love it. So it ranges from, I love it with specific things of what I love. This was what worked for me, this is what was a little bit off for me. But here’s how you can get some other eyes on it and such. I try to make sure that I’m uplifting to authors, because I think that’s so important. Because I know that that authors deal with a lot of rejection. And first time authors deal with a lot of fear of rejection, and not wanting to submit. And that’s because family and friends can be a really difficult audience if that is who you’re sharing your work with. And if you already have a different job or a different career path, they’ll probably say why would you want to switch to something that is so awful and unpredictable? And getting that suspension of disbelief for the author as well as for the family? I find comes from getting published and getting that first Yes, because the hardest number to convert is zero to one. And if you can convert zero to one, your averages of building on that number does grow exponentially. And that’s what research tells us and all thing. Not not first, yes is the hardest to get. Getting past that that insecurity and getting past that that fear of rejection, to get to the place where you can submit is the first step and, and getting not the first step. I guess the first step to go from having researched and preparing your writing. Once you’re ready to become a published author and your work is polished and edited and all of that right and you have your relationships and you’ve had critique partners and all of that and the next step is getting over that fear of rejection and submit, submit often and submit too many. If you are going to look for a specific publication to submit to, I’m going to use us as an example. Because Hello, I’m the owner. And I can say exactly how it will go down if you really, really want to be one of our short story authors. And you really, really want us to publish one of your stories, short stories, if you’re willing to wait up to three years to have that short story actually published, then absolutely target us. Because I will find a home within three years of any author I agree to publish. And that’s sort of my role. I don’t like authors to wait more than three years. For our books. We’re already there’s there’s no room right now, for books. If that changes, I will absolutely get on the mic and let everybody know, right? Because I want good books. And I love authors. And I want everybody to know when there’s an opportunity, I don’t like to function in the shadows, you know, I love being transparent. Going through submission, it’s also going through rejection, when you have a rejection, a lot of people are under that like tough love, suck it up and, and get moving. And I’m of a different mindset, because I am the owner of a publishing company, but I’m also a therapist. So I kind of have my therapy hat on when it comes to rejection. And how do you rebound from that, and I look at issues of resiliency and how resilient people are for rejection varies from person to person, and there’s no right or wrong resiliency, some people will be devastated for a year from one note or more. Other people will shake it off and just be like, well, that’s one in 1000. And I don’t want anyone to ever feel like they don’t have the right to grieve. They don’t have the right to feel pain. They don’t have the right to take a moment and heal and reassess. Because in that grieving period, it’s about self love. And it’s about built rebuilding that belief and self and healing and building up that resiliency. And resiliency, for when it comes to writing is impacted by and submission is impacted by so many other things that’s going on in the author’s life. So I encourage authors to be gentle with themselves and to find the gentlest writing process possible. I’m not a fan of the paint author, motif and the you know, the the tortured artist, I don’t think artists need to be tortured to create fantastic and amazing art. I do think for some people pouring that pain into their art can be very helpful. So I don’t knock it either. As long as it’s, it’s healthy. And as long as it’s not preventing you from having more good days than bad. And that’s how you decide your submission rate, how many submissions can you do, and look at how long it takes for them to get back to people on submissions. And that’s where being on social media is helpful, even if you have a private account. And even if you’re not on social media, you can put into whatever search engine you’re using the name and the social media platform, you’re wanting to investigate the name of the magazine, the social media platform, and you can pull up and scroll without having to be on that social media platform to get their their latest post, there is limited scrolling on that I find pen posts are really easy to look at, or the last five posts will let you know if their submissions are open. And if they’re sending out apologies for not getting back to people, then you know that they have a slower turnaround rate. Most publishers when they have an open call will then have what is what can what is the deadline for submission? And how long after submission? Will they be making a determination of who’s in the the zine and who’s not. Also something that affects rejection and affects a grieving period. Looking at how many submissions you do have a given piece, because that becomes tricky because what if you have a piece, you know, accepted at you know, your, your see choice, right? But it’s still being looked at, on your a choice, the decision of whether or not to roll the dice and I have authors tell me, we rolled the dice and now I’m miserable. I made the wrong choice. And I’m stuck with this choice. And I tell them I’m very very sorry, not when publishing with us. Thankfully, authors that didn’t decide to put was with us or we didn’t get back to them fast enough and their piece was accepted somewhere else. And they report that they’re unhappy. And I tell them, I’m, I’m sorry, you know, there’s nothing that we can do to alleviate that we can learn and, and move forward. And, you know, think about you have to think about your finances, you have to think about how long you can wait to be paid, we pay on acceptance, for short stories, and we pay on specific delivery dates when it comes to books, to help people map out their finances, when they’re going through the submission process with us. Looking at that, and thinking about that, and going with people who are being transparent about it, I think until you’re a more seasoned hand, and you have a real understanding of what your rhythm and flow is. And even if you’re an if you are a seasoned hand, and you’re finding out that your current rhythm, and flow is not working for you, when it comes to submissions, and having a schedule that makes sense for you, and has having a schedule, in terms of managing rejections and creating a hierarchy for the places that you’re submitting your pieces to, I think, really sitting down and taking, for me, I say, give yourself a week of dedicated energy, where you’re going to spend two to three hours a day trying to figure that out, is a really broad spectrum. And not everybody needs that I find I need to, I need five days to organize anything, whenever I’m launching something I need at least a week, if I’m trying to figure out how I want to do something, because I like to make a decision and live with it for a week. As a therapist, I tell my clients all of the time make a decision if they’re like, I don’t really know what to do. I have a multitude of things that I’m trying to figure out the answer to, say make a decision, live with that decision, as if it’s out in the world, don’t put it out in the world make a decision, for example. Xen see, has accepted and Xen A is coming back in a week, make a plan? What are you gonna do? Are you going to tell Xen see that you’re going to wait a week? Or with the possibility of them saying, Okay, we’re gonna move on to the next person? Are you going to accept Xen? See, are you going to accept publishers a deal? Or publishers B deal? Are you going to go and agents getting back to you, are you going to go with the publishing house, are you going to go with the agent, any of these types of decisions that you’re making, make it and then live with it for a week, most places can tolerate you not responding to an email for a week, that’s sort of the rule of thumb. For me, I give everyone one to two weeks for responses. Because I just I want people to have time to consider it, I tend to respond between 28 to 72 hours, because I’m a therapist, and that’s my response rate for my therapy practice. So that’s sort of ingrained in me every now and then it will get a little bit longer. And that’s just, you know, ebb and flow of life kind of thing. So once you make your decision, and you’ve, you know, you’ve lived with it, and you have decided whether or not that feels good or feels bad. Because when you say, okay, that’s the decision I’ve made, I’m going to live with it. You see, at the two or three day mark, you’ll have a really clear sense of how bad that feeling is or how good that decision is right? You’ll be feeling really bad and anxious or really positive. I tell my clients, my therapy clients that if you start to feel anxious, and you can’t function, because you’re trying to live with this decision for a week, that’s a clear indicator, you’ve made the wrong choice for you. And knowing that you’re making the right choice for you, is key for that resiliency, and when it comes to the grieving period, because if you’ve been true to yourself, you can say, this hurts, I wish I had made a different decision, I had no idea was going to hurt this much. And I advise people instead of beating yourself up for that. Use that to inform yourself so that you’re comfortable when you’re making a different decision. In the future. Grieve, be gentle with yourself. And
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don’t fall into that hole, Shake It Off mentality and don’t fall into beating yourself up. The other part of of being on submission and getting feedback. When you’re submitting to people pay attention to the type of feedback that they’re giving you and cross people off of the list that are just giving useless criticism. If they’re piling on and giving you five perspectives of why they didn’t like your writing, then they’re probably a bad fit. And for me why I say they’re a bad fit is because they felt the need to be so heavy handed. There’s no need for that heavy handedness where it’s five negative opinions are three negative opinions. If there is no redeeming, no positive anything about your writing, that’s useless. Because if they’re saying nothing about your writing works, there’s only one person, they can’t say that. They honestly cannot say that. And I encourage people, when I make a suggestion, please trust your news. Please trust what works for you. For me, third person point of view is really tricky. books that are written in third person point of view, can be really tricky, especially if the book is one character. Or if there are multiple chapters with only one character in it, that’s going to be really hard for readers. And that’s based on beta reader feedback. Let me share something with our beta readers. And they tell us because we’re lucky enough to have a group of readers who are have voracious appetites for reading and a limited budget, which is the perfect mix for press and an awesome recipe for a beta reader. And if you want to be one of our beta readers, please feel free to hit me up that you can send me an email Christopher at cinnabar moth.com. Or you can DM me on any of our social media platforms, varying response time varying response times when it comes to social media DM, I’m always looking for hungry BETA readers. And what I love about us having BETA readers is I let them go in I have a beta reader form. And I don’t require that a beta reader says anything positive at all about a piece of work, because I also read the piece of work. And it’s my job to say something positive, it’s not the beta readers job, when they’re working with the prospect. Like if you’re doing beta reads for authors directly, please try to do mix in some positivity. And, you know, give them some love and be gentle. So when our beta readers come back to us and fill out the beta reader forum, I look at first what can I say that’s positive about the book. So constructive criticism, I’m going to use point of view, if someone has a third person point of view, and there’s only one character I can say, I really enjoy the story, I really enjoy the world, I think it would work better for me and helped me connect more if it was in first person, because you have two chapters of, you know, only one character. And I want to be clear that I have three or four books that I’m currently reading, that have that perspective and that point of view. So it’s not any one author. And if you’re an author, and I’m reading your book, and you’ve gotten that feedback from me, you can I’m telling the truth, but you’re not the only author getting that feedback. So please don’t feel targeted. I never talked on the podcast about anything that’s specific to one author. Because again, I love authors, I want them to feel good, I want them to feel productive and optimistic and hopeful and excited about writing. Because the world needs more stories we just do. So if someone says so I gave my example of what I feel is useful criticism, I useful critique, it gives a very, very specific, very, very specific critique with positivity saying what I like about it, what worked for me and what what didn’t work, I find always starting with what works before saying what didn’t work, and then rounding up with, with what works and why I’m passionate about the story, to be my sort of go to my my sandwich, critiquing thing which I’ve talked about before, use this criticism is third person, I can’t relate to this book. It’s horrible third person point of view is ridiculous. Or something like I couldn’t connect with the character with no reason why if someone makes a negative statement doesn’t give a reason why and doesn’t make a suggestion on how to fix it. They’re not giving you anything. If I say third person point of view prevents me from connecting with your story. I need to tell you, why do I think first person would be better? Or is it that you don’t happen omnipotent, omnipresent where the narrator knows everything? And third person that would improve it? Or is the the third person point of view too unreliable? For for me, so there’s a lot of things that go into point of view, right? So if they’re not being specific about why a certain aspect of your writing doesn’t work for them, then they’re not being constructive. And that’s not useful criticism. So when you’re submitting if you’re getting critiques back during submission, a lot of people just do that form letter submission. We’re still small enough that we do personalized conversations. And sometimes it’s a edit and resubmit. Sometimes it is I’m sorry, our submissions are closed if I think it’s just not a good fit for us.
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And looking at what type of rejections Are you getting, if you’re getting rejection that forget just getting acceptance, crack on, you’re rocking it right? Don’t worry about it, just keep doing what you’re doing. The main thing during submissions I really want authors to do is to be gentle and avoid negative self talk, you’re not stupid, your writing doesn’t suck, you aren’t talented, you aren’t created creative, you are worthy of acceptance, you are worthy of publication, every type of writing, I don’t care if it’s not my cup of tea, I don’t care if I would never in a million years ever read it. I guarantee there’s somebody on the planet who would write there’s so many of us, there’s so much variety, and so much diversity when it comes to reading and writing. And there is as a press or magazine or website, there is some place somewhere that will publish you. And if all else fails, start your own, you know, set up your own blog or go on medium. And that’s the way to get your work out in the world. If you want to have a more gentle submission process. I think, looking at why you’re making the choices you’re making is so important. And getting over that fear of submitting and that fear of peering. And that fear of rejection and coping with the process and coping with rejection and acceptance. Making sure you have a system in place that works for you. And that is comfortable for you is key. Understanding why you’re making that system and why you’re why you’re making the choice to either submit industry or submit privately where you set up your own blog, or where you get you start a relationship and then you submit with them. All of those things are going to be really deeply personal to the author. And there is absolutely no wrong answer. There isn’t if you’re not ready to submit, if you’re not ready for the world to see your work, that’s completely okay. I just hope you keep writing. And I hope that you keep believing in yourself as an author. And if you’re getting just those blanket and distri rejections that aren’t personalized, and it’s just a form letter. If this starts to feel personal, it’s because I would guess I don’t know. But I suspect that it might be because you really had your hope set on the places that you are submitting to. But most places are going to give you general form letter rejection. And I’m sorry for that everybody
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deserves a personalized response. Everybody deserves to have their their writing read. And an actual response that has to do with with their writing. But a lot of people don’t get past the query letter and don’t read samples, if they’re attached. If they allow a tab samples. If it’s just a query letter, that’s even harder. And if you’re getting just a query letter, if they’re just taking query letters to meet without samples attached, that’s an indication that they’re fairly full and looking for something really specific. And that’s why they haven’t closed their submissions yet, is because they have their hopes set on getting something really special and they don’t want to miss out they have fear of missing out. But they’re probably actually have a full plate. And that’s a good metric to kind of judge by how busy are someone look at their response times look at what materials are they allowing people to send in? What materials are they attending to and looking at, if that makes sense. If you’re getting more personalized rejections that are very negative, that’s more about the person sending it then you’re writing I guarantee it, there’s no reason to be mean. And if you are someone who’s in a position of sending feedback to anyone ever start with positivity, you know it, positivity is free, saying something nice, doesn’t cost anyone a thing. Kindness is free. And I just hope that you know, everyone tries to be respectful of each other when we’re going through this process and be mindful that there is a person at the other end of every communication and and try to keep that in mind and be gentle and authors go through so much. I begged my industry nibbling to please be gentle, be kinder there’s you don’t need to get somebody who who was only action was to what to submit to you and want to be included in your publication, or be printed and, and put into the world by your press, there’s this really no reason for cruelty. And my hope is that if you have an experience with someone being cruel, that you allow yourself to not engage with that person, again, if it lands on you heavy, and take care of yourself, you know, your emotional well being has so much to do with your writing and your ability to have resiliency and put your work out in the world. And that’s my 50 cents on how to query and how to get the gumption to start the query process and how to survive the query process, and how to be on submission so that you can be published because the world needs more stories, and I love authors. So I hope that every episode of the podcast comes across the love letter to authors and Industry Transparency, because I just want authors to succeed and that goes for self published authors to Big Five authors to authors that haven’t been published yet. Just everyone who’s writing out there. And yeah, so this has been the cast for this week. I want to thank all my beautiful cinnabar moth for tuning in and if you’re not as cinnabar moth you can be any kind of mock up any kind of mock you’d like to be or even a butterfly, but I’m not Mariah Carey, so I’m not trying to steal her rhyme. Talk to you in a few weeks. And next week, we’re having an author, interview, something, something from an author next week. Bye