How many agents should you query?
- Typical range: 50-100 agents over 12-24 months.
- Batches of 8-10 agents at a time.
- Under 30 queries is usually undersampling.
- Over 150 queries usually means you are querying outside your genre.
- The right number depends on subgenre depth.
Most successful querying writers send to 50-100 agents over 12-24 months, in batches of 8-10 at a time. Sending to fewer than 30 is usually undersampling; sending to over 150 typically means you are querying agents outside your genre. The right number depends on your subgenre’s depth of agent representation.
Chapter i·Why it matters
Writers who query "everyone" get rejections from agents who do not represent their genre — wasting time and signaling unprofessionalism. Writers who query "the perfect ten" never get enough data to know whether the book is the problem or the query is. The right approach: 8-10 at a time, reassess after every batch.
Chapter ii·What to include
- A target list of 50-100 agents who actively represent your subgenre.
- Batches of 8-10 at a time.
- A reassessment after every batch: are pages getting requested?
- A "pivot point" at ~30 queries: if no requests, the query or pages need work.
- A "stop point" when you have an offer of representation.
- A reserve list of 20-30 backup agents for after the first round.
Chapter iii·Example
A debut author queries 64 agents over fourteen months in eight batches of 8. After the first batch (zero requests), she revises the query letter. After the third batch, she has three partial requests. After the seventh batch she has an offer of representation, withdraws the remaining queries, and notifies the other interested agents.
Chapter iv·Related questions
WriteLoom’s Pitch studio runs query batches with status and response tracking — so you can see when to pivot the query versus when to keep going.
See the Pitch studio