There is a very understandable impulse, when your manuscript is finally finished and your query letter is finally done, to just send everything at once. You’ve been working toward this. Your spreadsheet is ready. Your list of 80 agents is assembled. Why not just go?
Here’s why not: you’re about to burn through every opportunity before you have a chance to learn anything.
The Case Against the Bulk Send
Publishing consultant Jonathan Baker — who has spent years helping authors navigate the query process from the inside — is direct about this: “Don’t make the mistake of sending out 100 queries at once, because if you get feedback from any of those agents, if there’s something you didn’t see that’s terribly wrong with your query, you’ve already burned through all those agents.”
That feedback — the personalized notes, the partial requests, the “this is close but the opening isn’t landing” — is data. And you can’t use data you’ve already spent.
The Rolling Query Strategy, Explained
Baker’s approach is simple: send 20. Wait and watch. Adjust.
If you get personalized responses, read them carefully. Are multiple agents saying the same thing? That’s a signal worth acting on. Revise your query — or even your manuscript — and send the next 20.
This mirrors the same advice you’ll hear about beta readers: one person says something, file it away. Two or three people say the same thing, and you pay attention. Your early rounds of querying function the same way. The agents are, in effect, your most informed beta readers.
What to Do With “Didn’t Connect” Rejections
Some rejections won’t give you anything to work with. The phrase “didn’t connect as much as I’d hoped” appears in countless form rejections, and Baker is frank about how frustrating this is.
“It would be really helpful if they would say, ‘It didn’t connect with me, and here’s why. Here’s just one thing you could file away,'” he says. “There’s no easy answer for that except: move on. Don’t query that agent with that book again.”
The exception: if that response is coming back repeatedly, it may point to something real. Often it points to emotional stakes that haven’t quite landed. Baker sees this come up again and again — technically well-written queries that don’t give the agent that “stab in the heart” moment. (For more on this, see our guide on what agents actually feel when they open your query.)
Write the Next Book
Here’s the part that might feel counterintuitive: while your queries are making the rounds, Baker recommends starting your next project.
“To keep yourself from tearing your hair out, write another book. Focus on a new project — and then you’ll have two books, and you can have two queries making the rounds and you double your chances.”
This isn’t just a sanity strategy (though it is that). It’s a career strategy. Agents don’t make their money on a debut advance. They make it on your fourth book, your fifth, when readers start finding your backlist. Showing an agent — in your bio paragraph — that you’re already working on the next thing signals that you’re someone worth investing in for the long term.
“Agents know they’re going to have some deep conversations with their authors,” Baker notes. “But they’re not inviting the energy of someone who’s going to call them at 1 a.m. stressing about a deadline.” Being productive, easygoing, and already onto the next thing? That’s the energy that reads well on the page and in person.
A Few More Numbers Worth Knowing
Before you finalize your list, here are the word count benchmarks Baker uses — because an intern who has been told “nothing over 100,000 words” is not going to read your query if your word count reads 127,000. She’s going to send a form rejection:
- Contemporary romance / crime: ~80,000–85,000 words
- Romantasy: a bit longer, due to world-building
- Epic fantasy: 120,000 is fine; readers expect it
- Literary fiction: fewer rules; The Great Gatsby is ~58,000 words
- YA: 65,000–80,000
- Middle grade: ~40,000
And for the query letter itself: 300 words is the target. 400 is the hard ceiling.
The Bottom Line
Querying is a long game. It’s a numbers game. It’s a quality game. And it’s a patience game — which is perhaps the hardest one for writers who have been living with a manuscript for years.
But if you have a well-crafted, personalized, emotionally alive query, you are already in the top 10 to 20 percent of what’s hitting any agent’s inbox. Start there. Send in batches. Pay attention. Adjust. Keep writing.
“The whole thing,” Baker says, “is having the right agent look at it and go, ‘This rings a bell inside me.’ And that’s really just playing the numbers game with quality.”
Want expert eyes on your query before the next round goes out? Our Collaborative Query Consultation pairs you directly with a publishing professional. And if you’re still working out your comp titles, our guide on how to use comp titles without sinking your query is a good next stop.