getting results.

One of my great joys as an independent book editor is the moment an author writes to me with a real emergency: they’ve queried an agent and the agent wants to see not just a sample, but the full manuscript. It’s go time.

This happened to me recently while I was away on a long weekend upstate. The author had been to a writing conference and pitched to agents. We’d gone over her pitch before, I’d re-written her query letter for maximum effect, and the first 100 pages were polished to a shine. We’d gone round for round on the developmental revisions and all I needed to finish was the line edit, which we’d agreed I’d finish the following week. All that went out the window when first one, then three, then five agents requested the full manuscript. Was I on vacation? Yes. But I had been working on this book with this author for two years and I knew this was it. I didn’t want her to end up at the bottom of an agents inbox simply because she had to wait a week for her line edit. I pulled a series of all-nighters and the author was able to send the book out on Monday. Feeling lucky, this talented author then decided to also query her dream agent. She had very smartly held off in previous querying rounds. Deep down, she knew the book wasn’t ready until now. And the feedback from the conference had emboldened her. I can’t tell you how glad I was that I’d finished the line edit over the weekend—because her dream agent also requested the full manuscript.

Now, a quick word of advice on querying. Typically I recommend that you have your manuscript completely pristine before querying. You only get to make your first impression once. The best thing to do is to have all your ducks in a row before you query. The last thing you want is to get a bite on your pitch from a big agent and not have anything to send them! Sure they might say they’ll wait a few weeks or months while you finish up, but the magic of the moment is a huge part of their interest in a book. The longer you wait to send them something, the more their interest fades. So. Finish that manuscript before you query! Keep the momentum going.

In this case, it worked out. I’d edited this book many times and each time it got better—the line edit was like tuning up a well-constructed instrument before the big performance. And perform it did.