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Why I Created QueryTracker
As a struggling author, I knew there would be plenty of obstacles to overcome before I could achieve the dream of publication. But I quickly discovered the hardest part was not writing
a book. The hardest part is to find a literary agent to represent your book.
Sure, there are websites that try to help. There are those which offer lists of literary agents, but finding the agent's name was just the beginning. Of course I had to write the query letter,
but a major problem turned out to be how to keep track of all those query letters. Who did I already query? Which literary agents looked promising, and which were just not suited for my
work.
I was faced with the same problems every time I sent out a new batch of query letters. Sure I kept a list of which agents I already queried, but, as that list grew, it became harder and harder
to keep track. I found myself reading profiles for literary agents I had already determined were not suitable, or spending time on an agent just to realize that I had already queried her once
before.
I thought how nice it would be if I could just check a box beside the agent's name and forever mark her as queried. I could even go back after receiving that all-too-common rejection and, by
checking another box, record that, too.
And then the real power of this website hit me. With all this information, and with enough users on the site and contributing, we could take a lot of the guess work out of querying. Could
the information gathered reveal patterns, or help identify more likely agents for different genres? I was sure of it. Now, I felt I was on to something. I
hadn’t
been this excited since the first time I wrote, “The
End.”
So, I took this wishlist and I created QueryTracker.net, and now, although publication still eludes me, at least the query process has become much more organized, better targeted, and therefore
faster and easier.
I hope it is as useful to you as it has been for me. Take the tour.
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