Query Tracker: Rating the Number One Tool on How to Find Your Literary Agent

A Tool to Find Your New Literary Agent

I have to say it's crazy how far the publishing world has come in the last few years. Back in 2019/2020 I remember I was going to figure out how to independently publish my children's book, Princess Gabriella and The Never-Ending Kiss, but not after spending many hours, no make that days of researching on how to find literary agents who may want to traditionally publish my book.

In fact, the only true way to find out where to look was to find agencies through individual research or the holy grail at the time, The Guide to Literary Agents 2020 where an entire list of agencies where listed. This book saved so much time when it came to trying to find individual agencies who focused on children's board books. The downfall, not knowing if these agencies where open to submissions.

I spent hours going through the list to see which agents where taking submissions and what I would need to be able to submit to them to even be considered. In the end, I decided to it wasn't for me with this project, but I learned so much in the process.

But things have changed. In fact, finding and submitting to literary agencies is so much easier now with the help of Query Tracker. A website designed to help writers find a literary agent. No need to submit the old fashion way through snail mail and taking hours of your time researching if the company is taking submissions at all. Instead, with a few clicks you have all the information you need. This isn't an ad btw just an observation!

Let's actually take a step back. I was getting a little too excited if you couldn't tell.

I think the first question for those who might be finding themselves wanting to join the traditional publishing space is what is a literary agent, followed by another of why are they important?

A literary agent is someone who represents you as an author, wanting to pull the best contracts and relationships when it comes to publishing houses. They are your number one cheerleader when it comes to your work and want to sell your story to the highest best bidder. They are practically doing all the hard work for you once they take you on as a client. It's how they get paid after all. The best part, you don't have to pay them, until you start making money that is.

If you're wanting to get into the traditional publishing space you need to have an agent. No ifs, ands, or butts...unless you are someone famous or someone with a following where publishing houses take you on knowing you will sell even with little promotion. But, this is still pretty rare, so unfortunately you will have to go the long route and get an agent to fall in love with your story. Hench, Query Tracker.

I first heard of Query Tracker while listening to Meredith E. Phillips who vlogs her writing journey. For years she had been writing and finally decided to start submitting. And through her, I found out authors no longer needed to go the old school route and instead could find everything we needed in one place.

So, what about the site?

My first impression is the site is modern and easy to access with everything you need located at the top. You do need to create an account(ugh with all the accounts you need to make these days), which took less than a minute. The fun part included creating your current work in progress information such as title, genre, and desired word count for your dashboard. For me, I find this important because I'm going to assume the site can be used both ways in which a literary agent can try to find someone in the genre they are interested in as well(but I don't know this for a fact).

From there, I was sent a welcome email on the site telling me what Query Tracker was about and videos on how to navigate the site. The videos aren't long, but I did find out if you wanted more information you could pay a premium fee of $25 per month to get more. Based on what I had have seen with the site, you probably don't need to waste your money.

Once I read through the message, I realized how easy it was to find what I needed at the top of the home page. Seven buttons including categorizes such as the dashboard, publishers, and agents where easy to hit and took you right to where you needed to go.

For finding an agent all you do is click the button and it brings you to a a filter page where you can narrow down who might be your next agent through genre. It brings a list of all agencies listed in which you can hide the people who aren't taking submissions at this time, or how they want to receive your submission.

Query Tracker does give a notice that is it best to still look up the agents on their website to see if any new and updated information is available there before submitting to which I agree. You don't want to be submitting to an agent who hasn't updated their query page.

If you like an agent. You can easily save them to your list by simply clicking on a box. And when you are ready to submit you can go directly to the agents page where they tell you how to contact them.

For example, I clicked on one who wanted to have authors submit through Query Manager(this is Query Tracker but how the agents manage submissions), and from there a bunch of drop down boxes appeared to be filled out including details about you as an author, an area to submit your query letter, details about your story, and other stories your book might be related too.

Under the premium account you can find out more information on the agents and how they take the submissions, such as the rate they deny submissions, how fast they go through current submissions, how many submissions they currently have, etc. Once again, unless you are really wanting that information, you most likely don't need it.

Besides literary agents, Query Tracker also lists publishing houses available. You most likely won't use this as it's incredibly difficult to go directly to them without representation, but for those who want to focus more on indie press and career control then search away!

There is also a community button containing blog posts, which at this point, are mostly outdated. I was hoping to find a place where people who are using the site could go to discuss more about their writing and experiences, but it doesn't seem to be the case. It would most likely just be the same questions asked over and over again and a lot of noise that wouldn't be necessary anyways.

Overall, I think Query Tracker is a great tool to help authors find literary agents at a much faster pace then it used to be. So much faster, I hope it gives authors more time to focus on writing then worrying about publishing, because that's what your literary agent it for!

I would highly recommend checking out Meredith E. Phillips where she can show you a more in depth use of the premium Query Tracker for those of you who tend to lean more towards the data side of things.

Tell me in the comments below if you've used Query Tracker and your experience with the site.