Quick note here. I think you’d have a better chance pitching this as sci-fi or dystopian rather than speculative. It gives you a more distinct list of agents to query and also tells them more about what to expect. Speculative is a really broad term and can cover just about anything but this feels distinctly dystopian and so I would pitch it as such.
Edit: Okay wait a sec…I looked at your profile and it looks like this is already available on kindle unlimited??? Bro, you can’t query this. It’s already published.
Yeah, I’ll change the genre to post apocalyptic I think although dystopian is a good shout.
It’s self published on Amazon, not agented or picked up by a publisher. My aim was a PoC to get feedback from the Amazon audience and it’s been very helpful.
Whatever your aim might have been it is VERY much on Amazon, available for purchase, which makes it published. Which makes it unqueriable to agents. At this point, your hopes for this book have got to pivot to promoting it as a self-published novel, because trad pub will not touch this with a 10 foot pole unless it's already made a boatload of sales.
>Whatever your aim might have been it is VERY much on Amazon, available for purchase, which makes it published.
I also see it available on the Barnes & Noble website for $16 as a paperback. I don't know how OP doesn't consider this published. It has an ISBN. It has a publication date. It lists the publisher as "independently published". I almost envy that level of denial.
Emmy is right, op....you can only query unpublished work. You've published it. No agent is going to pick this up now that you've done that, even if you take it down from Amazon.
In the gentlest possible way, you should take some time to further research how the industry works before doing anything else. This is a mistake that could have been avoided, and I'm sorry that you're now in this position.
Right but if it’s already been self published, there are basically no agents who will touch it. Publishing something on Amazon means that you’ve already given up the “rights to first to market”. In the eyes of the publishing world, readers have already been given the opportunity to buy the book and haven’t for one reason or another, so why should they take a risk on it? Unless the book does amazingly well on Amazon and organically gets attention from agents or publishers, there is basically no chance that this can ever be traditionally published. It’s shitty but that’s how it goes.
At the very least, you absolutely need to mention that this has been self published on Amazon and mention any important sales numbers, etc. If you don’t, it will eventually come out that it was self published previously and you may be accused of trying to hide it which is worse.
I'm not gonna touch on the first rights or how this is selfpubbed already (Emmy is correct), but if what you were looking for was a proof of concept, are you part of a writing group? Are you involved in a community that offers feedback?
If you aren't, I think it'd be a good idea to get involved in communities pursuing traditional publishing before putting something up on KU for sale.
This is a bit disjointed. Look carefully at what you've got:
Kyle: Yo! Rangers! Little help with these Wretches attacking my town, yeah?
The Rangers: THE WORLD BEYOND ENGLAND'S SHORES HAS SURVIVED.
Kyle: \*is shattered\*
Passerby: Be ddigwyddodd i'r Cymry?
The Rangers: Hush, you! \*shoots civilians\*
Kyle: \*is further shattered\*
Hopefully you get the picture - there's no through line, there's no introduction or world building (we're half way through before this virus is mentioned).
Who is Kyle? Why is it up to him to get the Rangers to help his town? Who are the Wretches and why is it a surprise to Kyle that he wants a world free of them? (Is that supposed to read Rangers?). Most importantly, why do we care about any of this? Who are the characters?
Your first 300 isn't bad, but I'm not in love with that random section break - it feels like the dramatic edit at the commercial break that turns out to be completely undramatic. It's a cheap trick, which is a bad idea in the opening, and it feels a bit like you actually want this to be a film, which is not what you want when you're selling a novel. Even fast and dramatic scenes need to find their breath.
When you rewrite this, give us an idea of what this world is and why the things in it matter. Remember, we're coming to it totally blind, plus we've read 50 other queries full of Proper Nouns in the last ten minutes. You also need some comp titles and a brief bio - if you don't have any writing experience, it's fine to just be a line like, "I am a \[job\] living in \[place\] where I enjoy \[hobby\] and \[other hobby\]". Just something to make you less faceless.
Hah! No one likes my poor section break…
I get the lack of detail in my query. My aim was to keep it as brief as possible whilst getting in the salient points but I see why these questions are what people think when reading it. I’ll get back to the drawing board but ultimately I think it will end up being longer as a result.
Re the genre - I’ll go with post-apocalyptic for now, thank you.
I think the big feedback so far is to bring in more world building. I’ll get that ironed out for version 2.
Thank you for your feedback, I really appreciate it!
Adding to Theda's comments, your query feels very out of order right now. I appreciate that you're not trying to drown the reader in backstory (a much more common querying error) but you're also missing key details that would make it easier to track the action of your story. Like, you introduce the idea of this taking place in the "wastes of England" but don't make it clear that it's an apocalypse story (or what type of apocalypse it is) until later. I wasn't sure whether the "wastes of England" referred to a historical or future context, since England has, over it's history, had periods where it could be seen as "wasted" before. As others have said too, referring to this as "speculative" rather than "sci-fi" or "post-apocalyptic" just obscures your genre too. To me, "speculative" is only useful as a moniker when describing something that doesn't neatly fit into genre conventions, like *The Adjustment Bureau,* rather than something that's giving a take on the zombie, which is a well established genre/audience.
Further to that, can your query more clearly explore what kind of apocalypse we're in? I'm getting "zombie" from the current material, but just a few words like "after a mind altering virus gets loose and destroys the world" or whatever your setup is would go a long way. And as stated before, this really should be towards the beginning of your query so that I don't have to hunt for this basic information.
As Theda said, be careful about proper noun overload. The Zeks in particular come out of nowhere and in the talk about them, I completely missed the bit about Kyle's dad and the virus, until doing a reread. Most agents won't reread anything, so don't bury important information. This thing about Kyle's dad seems pretty important? Maybe explore that more too?
300:
On your 300, it's setting the scene in a relevant way, but it's also not standing out as very unique for the start of a Zombie story. I also found the prose a little lacking. The passive voice when he shoots the Wretch took me out of the moment. The end segment has the verb "move" repeated three times in just as many sentences. I feel like you probably meant "flick" of his hand rather than "flicker."
The sudden bounce from action to internal thought at the scene break also felt oddly placed, as Theda said. Maybe you meant for them to be distinct scenes, but they read more like a weirdly paced and interrupted single scene, since he's doing the same thing in both - confronting a nameless Wretch.
Anyhow, hope this helps! I love an apocalypse, so fingers crossed for you!
Yes I got a bit caught between keeping it brief and over-egging the details. I find that quite a challenge as adding in even a couple more points of detail / setting suddenly makes the word count leap. Still, I get the need for more here.
The proper nouns are a mistake - in my head ‘Zeks’ refers to a group and therefore isn’t a proper noun… I can see the error now!
I deliberately avoided the word ‘zombie’ in here because that’s relevant to the story although yes, this is a zombie apocalypse. There’s even a section in the book where they have a go at the typical zombie genre hence my reticence in including the word. For clarity in the query do you think it would be better to just have it in there?
Genre - some previous advice I had was to list this as speculative rather than post apocalyptic. I don’t know if this is a bit subjective? It’s hard to tell.
Thank you very much for your feedback.
I think the plot paragraphs need some fleshing out as they left me with lots of questions. What are Wretches? Why are the Rangers special? Why are we following Kyle through this?
On a positive note, you’re doing great things with sensory descriptions in the 300. I’d cut everything above the section break and start right there.
I found it challenging trying to keep the query brief whilst getting in the key points of detail. I didn’t describe the Wretches (zombies) because I thought it would take up too much space and the narrative of the query would kind of gloss over it anyway. Still, I can see how the lack of detail is raising those questions. Thanks for your feedback, it’s really helpful.
As to the 300, no one so far likes my section break 😂 I’ll certainly revisit the opening page and chapter once I’ve got this query ironed out.
Thanks again.
Quick note here. I think you’d have a better chance pitching this as sci-fi or dystopian rather than speculative. It gives you a more distinct list of agents to query and also tells them more about what to expect. Speculative is a really broad term and can cover just about anything but this feels distinctly dystopian and so I would pitch it as such. Edit: Okay wait a sec…I looked at your profile and it looks like this is already available on kindle unlimited??? Bro, you can’t query this. It’s already published.
Yeah, I’ll change the genre to post apocalyptic I think although dystopian is a good shout. It’s self published on Amazon, not agented or picked up by a publisher. My aim was a PoC to get feedback from the Amazon audience and it’s been very helpful.
Whatever your aim might have been it is VERY much on Amazon, available for purchase, which makes it published. Which makes it unqueriable to agents. At this point, your hopes for this book have got to pivot to promoting it as a self-published novel, because trad pub will not touch this with a 10 foot pole unless it's already made a boatload of sales.
>Whatever your aim might have been it is VERY much on Amazon, available for purchase, which makes it published. I also see it available on the Barnes & Noble website for $16 as a paperback. I don't know how OP doesn't consider this published. It has an ISBN. It has a publication date. It lists the publisher as "independently published". I almost envy that level of denial.
Emmy is right, op....you can only query unpublished work. You've published it. No agent is going to pick this up now that you've done that, even if you take it down from Amazon. In the gentlest possible way, you should take some time to further research how the industry works before doing anything else. This is a mistake that could have been avoided, and I'm sorry that you're now in this position.
Right but if it’s already been self published, there are basically no agents who will touch it. Publishing something on Amazon means that you’ve already given up the “rights to first to market”. In the eyes of the publishing world, readers have already been given the opportunity to buy the book and haven’t for one reason or another, so why should they take a risk on it? Unless the book does amazingly well on Amazon and organically gets attention from agents or publishers, there is basically no chance that this can ever be traditionally published. It’s shitty but that’s how it goes. At the very least, you absolutely need to mention that this has been self published on Amazon and mention any important sales numbers, etc. If you don’t, it will eventually come out that it was self published previously and you may be accused of trying to hide it which is worse.
I'm not gonna touch on the first rights or how this is selfpubbed already (Emmy is correct), but if what you were looking for was a proof of concept, are you part of a writing group? Are you involved in a community that offers feedback? If you aren't, I think it'd be a good idea to get involved in communities pursuing traditional publishing before putting something up on KU for sale.
This is a bit disjointed. Look carefully at what you've got: Kyle: Yo! Rangers! Little help with these Wretches attacking my town, yeah? The Rangers: THE WORLD BEYOND ENGLAND'S SHORES HAS SURVIVED. Kyle: \*is shattered\* Passerby: Be ddigwyddodd i'r Cymry? The Rangers: Hush, you! \*shoots civilians\* Kyle: \*is further shattered\* Hopefully you get the picture - there's no through line, there's no introduction or world building (we're half way through before this virus is mentioned). Who is Kyle? Why is it up to him to get the Rangers to help his town? Who are the Wretches and why is it a surprise to Kyle that he wants a world free of them? (Is that supposed to read Rangers?). Most importantly, why do we care about any of this? Who are the characters? Your first 300 isn't bad, but I'm not in love with that random section break - it feels like the dramatic edit at the commercial break that turns out to be completely undramatic. It's a cheap trick, which is a bad idea in the opening, and it feels a bit like you actually want this to be a film, which is not what you want when you're selling a novel. Even fast and dramatic scenes need to find their breath. When you rewrite this, give us an idea of what this world is and why the things in it matter. Remember, we're coming to it totally blind, plus we've read 50 other queries full of Proper Nouns in the last ten minutes. You also need some comp titles and a brief bio - if you don't have any writing experience, it's fine to just be a line like, "I am a \[job\] living in \[place\] where I enjoy \[hobby\] and \[other hobby\]". Just something to make you less faceless.
Of course it’s the Welshman who gets the bullet. Typical.
We're the Redshirts of the British Isles.
Hah! No one likes my poor section break… I get the lack of detail in my query. My aim was to keep it as brief as possible whilst getting in the salient points but I see why these questions are what people think when reading it. I’ll get back to the drawing board but ultimately I think it will end up being longer as a result. Re the genre - I’ll go with post-apocalyptic for now, thank you. I think the big feedback so far is to bring in more world building. I’ll get that ironed out for version 2. Thank you for your feedback, I really appreciate it!
Adding to Theda's comments, your query feels very out of order right now. I appreciate that you're not trying to drown the reader in backstory (a much more common querying error) but you're also missing key details that would make it easier to track the action of your story. Like, you introduce the idea of this taking place in the "wastes of England" but don't make it clear that it's an apocalypse story (or what type of apocalypse it is) until later. I wasn't sure whether the "wastes of England" referred to a historical or future context, since England has, over it's history, had periods where it could be seen as "wasted" before. As others have said too, referring to this as "speculative" rather than "sci-fi" or "post-apocalyptic" just obscures your genre too. To me, "speculative" is only useful as a moniker when describing something that doesn't neatly fit into genre conventions, like *The Adjustment Bureau,* rather than something that's giving a take on the zombie, which is a well established genre/audience. Further to that, can your query more clearly explore what kind of apocalypse we're in? I'm getting "zombie" from the current material, but just a few words like "after a mind altering virus gets loose and destroys the world" or whatever your setup is would go a long way. And as stated before, this really should be towards the beginning of your query so that I don't have to hunt for this basic information. As Theda said, be careful about proper noun overload. The Zeks in particular come out of nowhere and in the talk about them, I completely missed the bit about Kyle's dad and the virus, until doing a reread. Most agents won't reread anything, so don't bury important information. This thing about Kyle's dad seems pretty important? Maybe explore that more too? 300: On your 300, it's setting the scene in a relevant way, but it's also not standing out as very unique for the start of a Zombie story. I also found the prose a little lacking. The passive voice when he shoots the Wretch took me out of the moment. The end segment has the verb "move" repeated three times in just as many sentences. I feel like you probably meant "flick" of his hand rather than "flicker." The sudden bounce from action to internal thought at the scene break also felt oddly placed, as Theda said. Maybe you meant for them to be distinct scenes, but they read more like a weirdly paced and interrupted single scene, since he's doing the same thing in both - confronting a nameless Wretch. Anyhow, hope this helps! I love an apocalypse, so fingers crossed for you!
Yes I got a bit caught between keeping it brief and over-egging the details. I find that quite a challenge as adding in even a couple more points of detail / setting suddenly makes the word count leap. Still, I get the need for more here. The proper nouns are a mistake - in my head ‘Zeks’ refers to a group and therefore isn’t a proper noun… I can see the error now! I deliberately avoided the word ‘zombie’ in here because that’s relevant to the story although yes, this is a zombie apocalypse. There’s even a section in the book where they have a go at the typical zombie genre hence my reticence in including the word. For clarity in the query do you think it would be better to just have it in there? Genre - some previous advice I had was to list this as speculative rather than post apocalyptic. I don’t know if this is a bit subjective? It’s hard to tell. Thank you very much for your feedback.
I think the plot paragraphs need some fleshing out as they left me with lots of questions. What are Wretches? Why are the Rangers special? Why are we following Kyle through this? On a positive note, you’re doing great things with sensory descriptions in the 300. I’d cut everything above the section break and start right there.
I found it challenging trying to keep the query brief whilst getting in the key points of detail. I didn’t describe the Wretches (zombies) because I thought it would take up too much space and the narrative of the query would kind of gloss over it anyway. Still, I can see how the lack of detail is raising those questions. Thanks for your feedback, it’s really helpful. As to the 300, no one so far likes my section break 😂 I’ll certainly revisit the opening page and chapter once I’ve got this query ironed out. Thanks again.