Querying: End of Year Reflection

This has been an okay year for me.

I’ve spent most of it working my day job, reading, and spending time with friends and family. And when I mustered up enough ambition and patience, I queried my LGBTQ+ witch fantasy novel/series to literary agents and independent publishers.

Here are the stats from those queries as of 12/27/2022:

Category#Queries Submitted66Rejections*40Full Manuscript Requests3*These are just the ones that actually took the time to reply back.

One look at these numbers and 12-year-old me would’ve been disheartened, to say the least. And while 27-year-old me isn’t enthralled, these three numbers hold more than my perceived failures.

They hold my efforts.

They hold my resilience.

They hold my victories.

My life in 2022 is encapsulated within these numbers, each holding a unique span of time colored by my desire for publication.

My legs tingling while I scrolled, clicked, typed, and copied & pasted for hours on end.

Tears blurring my vision as I sat in my car, staring at the email pulled up on my phone.

A grin stretching my lips wide until my cheeks grew sore, yet I kept smiling.

Although I didn’t score an agent or a publishing deal this year, I’m proud of my progress, no matter how insignificant it may seem. Oddly enough, it’s made me more confident in myself and my writing and thus influenced my decision to pursue self-publishing.

Nothing is set in stone yet, and I’m still waiting on a couple of replies to my queries, but if nothing comes of those, I plan to self-publish the first book in my witch fantasy series through Kindle Direct Publishing at the beginning of 2023.

The ebook will most likely be available first, followed soon after by the paperback and hardcover. I hope to post an update with more details within the first weeks of January.

While I’d still prefer to be signed by a traditional or indie publisher, self-publishing feels like the right move for me at this point. And I’ll most likely start querying agents again later next year, but it might not be for this particular novel/series.

Whether you’re in the querying trenches, in the midst of publishing (self or trad), or still writing your first novel, I wish you the best of luck and hope that 2023 brings you a resolution, whatever that may look like for you.

Happy Writing!

C. R. Pigg