How much time does it take to query a book?

Some time ago, I got curious about how many hours I sunk into querying a book. Then, because I’m a professional data analyst, I thought “I should get some data and analyze it.”

So I decided that since I was going to query a book, I’d simply track how long it took me using a timekeeping site.

What I soon realized is that, yes I have some data now about how long it takes to query a book. But I also quickly realized the limits of my own data in really tackling this question. As I go through how long it took me to query my last book, I’ll try to point out these limitations. But I want to give three big limitations up front, because I think it’s helpful context.

1. This is the fifth book I’ve queried. I’ve been in publishing for over a decade. My querying process now is highly efficient compared to when I first started. A lot of these numbers are going to be smaller as a result. Further, I was pretty over querying. When I started I fretted a lot more over queries. I also personalized a lot more, both of which would have meant I was spending more time per query than I did this round.
2. I had a fairly short query list. This is a combination of being somewhat picky with who I query, lots of agents being closed or not currently accepting my genre, and the fact that I ended up signing before querying everyone on my list. The more people you query, the more time it’s going to take. So this is another area where my numbers are going to be smaller.
3. A lot of stuff blurred together. I tried to keep time for different activities, but it’s not exact. Sometimes I’d be researching new agents on query tracker and drift into tracking queries I’d already sent without thinking to adjust the timer. That sort of thing. I also a few times found myself looking at a MSWL thread I’d stumbled onto on Twitter without thinking to clock it as agent research. All this to say, I did my best but tracking was a little hard.

(The next paragraph has query stats in it, so skip if you don’t like seeing those)

A little additional context on what the querying process for this book looked like. The book is a YA romantasy. You can actually read the query for it on my blog. I drafted it in early 2022, revised mid-year, and started querying in October 2022. In June 2023, I got an offer of rep on it. I sent a total of 55 queries and got five requests.

I mostly bring this up because the number of agents you query impacts how long the process takes, and because getting requests also increases the amount of time because it’s additional email, formatting, follow-up, etc. I tried to break it up into fixed time costs (stay the same regardless how many agents you query) and variable time costs (increase as you query more agents). It turns out it was mostly variable time costs, though.

Fixed time costs

Writing/Revising query letter: 3 hours

This includes everything related to actually creating the query letter. Drafting and revising. This also includes time spent reviewing it with a couple critique partners. I want to reiterate, I don’t think this is a normal amount of time to spend crafting a query. I have an inordinate amount of query experience that I’m relying on.

Writing synopsis: 1 hour

Pretty straightforward. Again, I have a lot of experience with this sort of thing and suspect that made me faster than most.

Variable time costs

Agent Research: 6.5 hours

Time spent finding the agents who rep my genre. I rely on QueryTracker, MSWL, and Twitter to find agents. Interestingly, one of the biggest time costs here is for agencies with a no-from-one-is-a-no-from-all policy, where I spent a lot more time trying to make sure I was querying the best-fit agent. I will once again say, I think this is another area where my experience lead to some time savings. I already knew of a lot of the agents/agencies on my list and was building my list based off of my past three lists, rather than starting from scratch.

Sending Queries & Tracking: 20 hours

I originally tracked these as separate categories, but found myself doing them simultaneously pretty frequently. This category includes actually sending the emails, formatting the materials, updating the spreadsheet, filling out QM forms, and the like. I figured that on average, I was spending about 15 minutes to send a query letter.

Since this is obviously the big category, I’ll break down what some of the biggest time sucks here were. The first is QM formatting. I’ve never managed to paste my materials into QM and have it keep my italics and other formatting. Also, people have already discussed this plenty online but some forms just take forever to fill out. I also found myself spending longer if the agent asked for materials that were a different length and format than I already had handy.

I also spent a whole lot of time trying to figure out who on my list was open. I’ll preface this whole paragraph by saying I respect why agents need to close to queries. That said, it created a huge administrative load for me to try and track who was open when. I checked at two different points during querying, and at both times about 40% of my query list was closed, so tracking this really is a substantial element of trying to work your way through a list. But especially towards the end of querying, I’d just sit at my desk and spend ten minutes trying to see who was open.

One thing I did not spend a lot of time on was personalizing queries. In the past I did spend so much time on this. This time around, it just didn’t feel worth it. Of the requests I received, I don’t think a single one had any personalization. So to any querying writers, honestly, I don’t think this is something worth spending much time on.

As a final note on this, I think if I had continued querying my average of 15 minutes per query would have gone up. I sort of gravitated towards the queries that were easiest to send early in querying, so a lot of the agents I had left would have taken longer. I was a little over halfway through my potential list of agents when I got my offer.

Total: 30 hours

Incidentally, I didn’t track any of the time I spent post receiving the offer (in calls with agents, notifying agents, etc.). That’s my bad, I was excited and I forgot. The pre-offer time total for querying comes in right around 30 hours, though. My estimate is that I would have been at 50+ hours if I had gone through my full list.

I started thinking about this because my therapist asked me how I would write differently if I was just writing for fun vs writing to be published. My immediate thought was “Well, I wouldn’t do all the querying stuff because it’s a pain!” And it definitely was a pain. Maybe not the first few times when I wasn’t so jaded, but the last couple were absolute slogs. So I decided to actually figure out what kind of burden querying was actually imposing on my life.

This project also arose from constantly hearing that authors have nothing to lose by putting themselves out there, you can’t miss a shot you don’t take, etc. The truth is even apart from the emotional cost of querying, it’s a substantial time cost.

I’m never going to tell authors when they should quit or keep going with pursuing publishing, but I always want authors to go in with eyes wide open. Given all the limitations, I’m not sure if this post helps give some of that transparency to the time costs of querying, but I hope that it does.

Your time is valuable! Treat it that way!