2024 ~ Query stats from my 1st year agenting

The cold hard numbers from a year's worth of queries

Hellooooo! This is another numbers and stats post I’ve been very excited to write—in part because I’ve been curious myself about what the data would be!

Welcome to a numbers-heavy post covering my first year of agenting and detailing queries received, percentage of fulls requested, where I got my authors from, etc etc. It’ll be fun!

One small disclaimer: my “year” did start February 16th when I opened to queries, so just know that this is *actually* 10 1/2 months… but close enough, right?

Another small disclaimer: I do have 15 full manuscripts left from last year still on my Kindle (some in progress, some still unread). They may result in another offer or two, which I realize makes these numbers… not totally perfectly square. But we’re just going to fudge over that, because let’s be honest—the job of the agent is always rolling forward with batches of work that may have begun months ago, so it’s kinda hard to find a “clean” hard stop within which to analyze the data. This is the best I’ve got right now!

ALSO, these numbers don’t include queries that people withdrew, which may amount to another 20 or so (some of which were in my maybe pile when they withdrew, ugh).

So—FIRST!

How many queries did I receive in Year #1 of Agenting?

QueryManager, the system I use to receive and manage queries, has a handy dandy little graph that makes this information pretty easy to see:

I opened to queries only three times during my first year of agenting and received the following number of queries:

• February 16th - February 21st (5 days) - 876 queries

• April 23rd - June 15th (53 days) - 1,684 queries

• October 1st - 21st (20 days) - 1,067 queries

• Other queries* received throughout the year - 32 queries

• Queries received directly to my email** (that I initiated) - 15 queries

*From requested conference materials, pitch events, agent guides I spotted and liked, referrals, etc.

**Unsolicited queries to my email or social media DMs are deleted, to preserve my sanity!

Total queries received: 3,674

QueryManager also provides a bar chat by genre. Here is the Fiction breakdown, where you can see the very heavy majority of queries were in the Fantasy and YA Fantasy space. If we add up the 3 main fantasy categories, which are the age groups of adult, YA and Middle Grade, we have:

1,051 fantasy queries, or 28.6% of all queries received.

Here’s the non fiction breakdown:

The heaviest hitter in NF is memoir, which interestingly (and sadly) is one of the hardest to sell, unless you have a significant platform (think 100k followers… yup) (I’m sorry) (I don’t make the rules).

Non fiction is an area I’m excited to grow in in 2025, btw!

A quick note on reading queries

I very quickly discovered as I went through that first batch of queries from February 2024 as a brand new baby agent that I could absolutely NOT go through them in order received (you can read more about that experience here). I understand this may be maddening to some… and it was honestly surprising to me! But I can only read so many fantasy queries in a row (for instance) before becoming completely numb to the words on the screen. As I read queries, I try to mix it up genre and age category wise so that I’m coming at the material fresh.

My strategy has generally been to treat each of these batches as a kind of unit. For example, I didn’t extend many offers from the October batch of queries until I had gone through all of them and requested all the fulls I want to read. This is probably just me and my brain, but since I can’t sign, ya know, ten people at once, I want to make sure I’m being discerning and strategic about what I’m doing.

This doesn’t mean that my full requests are competing with each other (though I realize it may seem that way from what I just said). If I find multiple books I love, I will sign them!! (At least at this point in my agent journey!) But whittling them down in this manner, for my process, helps me clarify what I’m most excited about, if that makes sense.

How many full manuscripts did I request?

So this number DID surprise me—I would have guessed I requested between 200-300.

Turns out I only requested 103 from the query inbox.

HOWEVER—there were special requests and events during which people shared their full (by my request) up front, meaning that QM didn’t log it as a full request even though the full MS was attached in those cases. This represents about another 25 submissions.

So we are adding those in to the total number, giving us 128.

I should also point out that, especially in the first half of the year, some referrals as well as pitch event people did send fulls directly to my email, which are not counted in this number. Since then, I wised up and route everyone through the query inbox! I read another 10 or so manuscripts in this manner.

That brings us up to 138.

So! Let’s get a quick visual here. 3,674 queries received / 138 fulls requested = 3.7% request rate.

How many R&Rs did I offer?

I offered 10 R&Rs (and keep in mind this represents essentially reading 10 more books, since a full second read was needed!).

Two of them resulted in offers of rep, which astoundingly tracks with the 20% R&R success ratio that I’ve seen kicking around the interwebs.

How many authors did I offer to represent?

Btw, I am counting two authors I offered on just after the New Year, since they were part of that October batch of queries (one said yes—one I should hear from Friday, FINGERS CROSSED PEOPLE!).

I made 31 offers of representation.

Let’s graph that, as it compares to full requests AND query inbox!

I will say that this 22% may be higher for me because I request 30 pages up front in the query. There are queries with stellar opening pages that, by page 30, have fallen off the wagon a bit. This means I may request less than other agents (?). For an agent who goes from, say, a 10 page sample to a full request, I could see a possibility where their full request rate is higher, but their fulls-to-offers ratio is lower.

Next, let’s look at rejected queries / offers of rep:

Just under 1%! A depressing number, I’m aware.

How many authors signed with me?

So NOT all 31 of those lovely authors said yes to me. Also, yes, THIS is the hardest part of agenting for me so far (more on that here, btw). The heartbreak of not getting to partner with someone whose work you fell head over heels for is truly awful. It’s way worse than editor rejections, though of course those suck too—the best way I can describe it is getting rejected by a crush. I have a literary crush on everyone I offer to represent, and that unrequited love is BRU-TAL. Brutal.

Okay! 20 people signed with me, 10 rejected me, and 1 is that pending offer that I should hear back about Friday.

To summarize:

3.8% of queries led to full requests

7.2% of full requests led to R&Rs

0.8% of queries led to offers

0.57% queries led to representation:

A quick note—20 authors in 1 year may seem like a lot. In fact, I was warned by people (more than once) that if social media noticed I was signing that many authors as a new agent, I might get, erm, blasted. Thank heavens this didn’t happen. I went into this wanting to hit agenting hard. I was 40 when I became an agent (I’m 41 now) and I have no time to waste, heh heh. Now that I have hindsight on my side, this was 100% the right rhythm for me, and thankfully I have made enough deals to back that up. =)

What age groups and genres do my authors write in*?

*I do have multigenre authors—we love that! But for the purposes of this list, I’ll stick to the project I signed them for.

Variety is the name of the game here! I’m an omnivorous reader, and I always wanted to represent a list that reflects what I truly enjoy—which is a LOT of different kinds of stuff!

Adult (65% of my list)

• 1 Memoir

• 1 Horror

• 3 Romance

• 2 Thriller / Suspense

• 3 Mystery

• 2 Romantasy

• 1 Sci-Fi

Young Adult (20% of my list)

• 2 Romance

• 1 Horror

• 1 Graphic Novel

Middle Grade (10% of my list)

• 1 Fantasy

• 1 Horror

Picture Book (5% of my list)

• 1 Picture Book

Where did my authors come from?

Not everyone came from a cold query—though most did! Here’s the breakdown:

• 17 from the slush pile (i.e. cold queries with no prior connection to me)

• 3 from referral/connection

• 0 from pitch events/conferences - though to be fair, I only participated in 1 conference last year, so please don’t read too much into this number (and there was one close call from that event who I hope to see more work from!)

Here’s a handy pie chart to show that yes, most authors come from the cold, cold slush pile. Dang I love that slush pile. It’s sent such fabulous people my way!!

A summary of the numbers

Let’s look at them all together, shall we?

• Queries received: 3,674

• R&Rs offered: 10

• R&Rs that turned into offers of rep: 2

• Offers of rep extended: 31

• Authors that signed with someone else: 10

• Authors signed: 20

• Awaiting author response: 1

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I have no idea if this was encouraging or discouraging to you… but in either case, I hope this was at the very least interesting, and I look forward to doing this all over again next year and comparing year #1 to year #2! I don’t anticipate, for example, signing 20 more people in 2025. I don’t have a number in mind, but I want to be mindful of staying on top of my current clients’ work, so… we’ll see! I’m going to feel it out and take things step by step.

I’d also like to take a moment to say—if you’ve queried me, THANK YOU. It’s a tremendous privilege to get to set eyes on the creative work of passionate people who are pursuing their dream, and it’s a total thrill when I get to be part of moving people forward towards their dream.

And that’s a wrap, folks! Cannot WAIT to see all the amazing talent that is bound to hit my inbox in 2025.