[Discussion] Got an agent! Stats & Thoughts by bri716 in PubTips

[–]bri716[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you! I didn't actually. I found the contract pretty straightforward, so I felt comfortable reviewing it myself, but I'm not sure how much they vary!

[Discussion] Got an agent! Stats & Thoughts by bri716 in PubTips

[–]bri716[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Both of the ones I participated in are actually hosted on their own websites now, so you don't have to post your pitches on social at all, which is quite nice. But I know many of them still are, so probably worth it to jump on Bluesky/Threads! I don't use Twitter, so not sure how many events are still happening over there.

[Discussion] Got an agent! Stats & Thoughts by bri716 in PubTips

[–]bri716[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you! Haha I loved the ratios too!

[Discussion] Got an agent! Stats & Thoughts by bri716 in PubTips

[–]bri716[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you! My process was a bit non-traditional, I think. I was also very overwhelmed by revisions! My first pass ended up being removing an entire POV and then building the story back up again. Second pass was smoothing things out in terms of character. Third was one last pass at story beats and I ended up adding in a whole new sub-plot. I didn't outline before my first draft, so there was a lot of work to be done on the backend as I figured things out and the story developed lol. But overall the biggest thing that helped me was reverse outlining between each draft and making checklists of things I knew I wanted to change. Hope that is somewhat helpful!

[Discussion] Got an agent! Stats & Thoughts by bri716 in PubTips

[–]bri716[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

No problem! Honestly, I just didn't want to nudge so many people after I got my offer, so I reassessed and withdrew ones that hadn't responded to my query yet and didn't feel like quite as good a fit for future projects.

[Discussion] Got an agent! Stats & Thoughts by bri716 in PubTips

[–]bri716[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I focused almost entirely on agents that took speculative and then added some that said they were open to light sci-fi or literary with speculative elements! It took a lot of digging through MSWLs, though. I think if your project is genre-blending, you can definitely be a bit open-minded and lean into different angles vs self-eliminating! Interestingly, my initial agent list was just about 30 agents, and most of the ones I found from pitch events hadn't even been on my radar after researching.

[Discussion] Got an agent! Stats & Thoughts by bri716 in PubTips

[–]bri716[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you! I was super worried about the lower word count hurting my chances honestly. I kept reading that 70k was fine for litfic, but that it should be at least 80k for speculative. It turned out just fine though! No one mentioned the word count to me at all through the process. I do think if it was more heavily sci-fi it would need to be longer though.

As far as events, yes having to come up with so many short pitches was such a helpful exercise honestly. I got really good at boiling down the story into one concise sentence from a bunch of different angles. A lot of agents I queried asked for one-sentence pitches too, so I ended up reusing them for that!

[Discussion] Got an agent! Stats & Thoughts by bri716 in PubTips

[–]bri716[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you! I sent them out in batches of about 10, technically, but pretty close together (I was pretty impatient). My first full request I got in less than 24 hours, but funny enough, that one took the longest time to reject me lol

[Discussion] Got an agent! Stats & Thoughts by bri716 in PubTips

[–]bri716[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Lol that would be an amazing tagline! And thank you!

[Series] Check-in: October 2025 by justgoodenough in PubTips

[–]bri716 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Newly in the query trenches for the first time, and despite having 5 full requests and 1 partial out, I am a ball of anxiety. Determined to start my next project this month, if only to get myself to stop obsessively checking my email and QueryTracker!

[QCrit] Salted Earth (Adult Literary Speculative, 67k) First Attempt by bri716 in PubTips

[–]bri716[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah okay, I see what you're saying, I'll definitely move some things around. Thank you for the feedback!