What Makes a Query Feel Like a "Big Book"? | The Manuscript Academy

You’ve heard of agents reading for clarity, genre, word count, and fit.

But what about for urgency?

In a world where it can take six months or more to hear back on a query (what used to be considered a long time on even a full manuscript!), there are still ways to make your work feel like I need to be the first person to make an offer on this.

In last week’s Interactive Query Workshop, where Jessica & Julie give 2:1 live query consultations to members, several people in the chat asked for clarification: “What is a big book?”

When literary agent Jessica Sinsheimer talks about a “big book,” she doesn’t mean a long one (though that’s a logical guess!). She means a book that feels like it could be a cultural phenomenon. A book where the agent thinks: This is going to go fast. I need to read it now.

Can you turn a super niche book into a big book? Probably not.

But can you dial up this sense of urgency as far as your topic will allow? Absolutely.

And when agents sense a big book, they move it to the head of their reading queue — because being the first agent to make an offer is, as we all know, a huge advantage.

What Creates the “Big Book” Feeling

When a story has natural ties to real things happening in the world — big topics we’ll likely be thinking about for the next few years to come — it feels timely.

Think about it from an agent’s perspective. They’ve spent the day reading queries. Some are good. Some are well-written. But every so often, one lands on their screen and they think: I see where this fits. I see why people need this RIGHT NOW.

In that moment, the work gathers a certain sense of both speed (timeliness) and heft (importance). Put those together, and you have a book with momentum. (See what we did there, alluding to physics? We’re proud too.)

For a YA novel about what happens when a false utopia collapses, Jessica pointed out that the themes the author was already exploring — trusting new systems after the fall of corrupt ones, the psychological residue of dysfunction, whether peace can feel good when you’ve only known chaos — were becoming more urgent with every passing year.

“As I was writing it, it just keeps feeling more like real life.”

That’s the signal. That’s what to name.

How to Weave It In Without Sounding Like An Adult Trying To Be “Hip”

You know how an adult trying too hard to be cool can create an instant cringe? (This is usually most notable in YA.)

Calling your work a big book can have a similar uncomfortable effect.

The key is not to stand back and announce that your book is timely. Don’t write “This book speaks to the current political climate.” Write the story, and let the resonance surface.

Then agents not only feel the momentum, but feel smart for noticing.

A few ways to do this:

Connect the personal to the systemic. If your memoir is about trans rights, you can acknowledge that what happened to you in the past is something people in power are trying to bring back. The parallel lands.

Name the questions without answering them. At the end of the query, list the larger questions the work raises. Autonomy. Institutional trust. The difference between peace and freedom. A quick list of 3–4 thematic threads signals that this is a book people will talk about.

Use the word “today” or “right now” carefully. If it’s organic — if the world genuinely is reckoning with your book’s themes — one well-placed sentence can shift the entire register of a query.

The Genre-Market Relationship

Knowing your book’s genre isn’t just about shelf placement — it’s about communicating to an agent that you understand where your book lives, the books it hangs out with, and who will buy a copy.

Several writers in our recent workshop were navigating this question in different ways. One work had romance, family trauma, and feminist themes in equal measure. As Jessica noted: that’s not a romance novel. That’s book club fiction with a romance in it — a meaningful distinction, because the agent who represents it, the marketing copy that will be written for it, and the readers who will share it are all different.

Similarly, a YA novel was originally framed as dystopian — but when the author leaned into the retelling elements, the comp titles shifted, the category crystallized, and the query suddenly felt more like itself.

And yes, that’s a great sign: your work feels more like itself.

Getting genre right is a form of self-knowledge. And when your query demonstrates that self-knowledge, it signals to agents that you’re a writer who will be easy to work with, because you know where your book belongs.