Query Math: An Agent’s Take on Tackling Queries
Literary agent Victoria Marini shares her take on tackling queries from writers as she breaks down the query math.
As winter drags on (ceaselessly) here in New York, I’m looking forward to daylight savings. It always feels like there’s more time, even when there isn’t. I suspect the extra sunlight brings a swell of optimism to writers as we always tend to notice an uptick in queries during the spring.
Doubtless, there are plenty of agents preparing to receive an influx of queries, but writers don’t seem to have many resources to deal with the brutal wait of querying or the demoralizing wave of form rejections or, worse, non-responses.
So, I thought I’d give you one of the few comforting resources I turn to in times of publishing upset: Math!
It may seem an odd source of comfort for a word-oriented person (who only graduated high school because the mathematics department was both generous and irritable), but in a career like ours, where so much is malleable and shifting, there’s something comforting about the hard lines numbers can provide.
And the math of querying, all comes down to time.
I know the standard line is that we don’t have enough. And while that certainly feels true, it’s also a bit vague. So, I did what I generally do when I’m trying to make sense of whether a feeling reflects reality: I did some calculations.
This is me showing my work, so you have a bit more insight into what it means exactly when we say “we’re too busy.”
Breaking down the work.
Assuming an agent is using a basic email server like Gmail, which I was, and they’re generally average with reading speed, and their computer is an older but not obsolete MacBook, it takes:
- One second to click open a query
- 180 seconds to read, if we’re only doing the absolute minimum of 3 minutes, and that depends on reading speed and interest, as many of us will read much more of a sample
- 10 seconds to scroll, to select a template, and insert a form response
- .65 seconds to hover & click “send”
That means it took me, at a minimum, 191.65 seconds to respond to a query. Now, at the time I ran these numbers back in 2024, I was receiving anywhere from 713 to 1,231 queries per month.
Which is 37.95 hours a month to answer queries.
That wouldn’t seem so daunting, but all those hours are unpaid (albeit hopeful) hours. By which I mean, when you examine the vast and unpredictable scope of an agents’ services—editorial, strategy, inbox management, negotiations, permissions, licensing, liaising with art and design, publicity and marketing, booksellers, helping colleagues, reviewing royalties, payment tracking, rights tracking, author crisis management, and any number of ad hoc tasks—we’re already working a full time job. These 37.95 hours are extra labor (most of the reading that editors, publicists, markets, sales reps are doing). Many of you write your books in the rare free hours you can scrape from a day—the wee hours before your kids are up, the half an hour between their bedtime and yours, lunch breaks, stolen late nights.
Like most of the working population, we are also aiming to put our time where we are also stealing moments to scout and grow our lists. So when you see something like a batch reply or a non-response, it’s not because we don’t respect or welcome you, it’s because we can easily spend 4 hours a month of just clicking and inserting a form pass.
So what does this mean for an aspiring author?
Well, the good news is that we are taking the time to review and consider, but the 180 seconds number is key. I’m sure you’ve heard a ton about the “hook.” The word has likely appeared in these pages hundreds of times over the years, but these days you need even more than that. You need to make us feel something. Afraid, curious, righteously angry. Make us chuckle, put a pit in our stomachs, or immediately connect us to a character in just a few words.
We know that sounds like a daunting task, but come back to why you write—the reason you choose yawning in front of your glowing computer screen over sleep, or why you stay in to write instead of meeting friends, or allowing your kids extra screen time because you’ve had a moment of inspiration you need to get on the page. It’s the same reason we read. To feel. To connect. It’s the hope of the next great story, the unputdownable page turner.
So with this numerical insight, you’re armed with the knowledge of what’s going on on the other side. Give us a reason to be reckless with our time. To search for moments we don’t have and forget our to-do lists. Because if it’s a numbers game at all, in the end it’s one meant for gamblers—those who roll the dice with time when they’re not sure if the bet will pay off. And your job is to keep us at the table.
