How to Resubmit Your Query to A Literary Agent
by Mary Kole | Former literary agent, now a freelance editor, writing teacher, and IP/story developer for major publishers and creators.
Today, we’ll discuss how to resubmit queries to literary agents who have already turned down your work in the past (whether for your current project or an earlier one). There is a finite number of literary agents, so at some point, you will need to resubmit your query letter or project to someone you’ve targeted before, even if they have already rejected previous work. One of our Good Story Learning members put it this way:
I'm beginning my second round of book submissions to agents. I had sent the same project to certain agents around three to four years back. I've revised the novel quite a bit since then. Should I resubmit it to agents who showed no interest initially?
The Best Way to Resubmit
If you’ve spent any amount of time on the literary agent submission trail, you have probably shown your work to some agents who haven’t offered representation. You can absolutely resubmit to every agent you’ve reached out to, but some literary agents may be less receptive than others.
If someone sent you a query letter form rejection, they might not be any more engaged the second time around, unless you’ve done a huge revision or your new project has a great premise. But there are a number of rejection responses (how many rejections is too many?). If the agent sent you a revise and resubmit letter, then they are actually eager to hear from you when it’s time to resubmit or send new work. If they sent you somewhat personalized notes, they might take a second peek as well. None of them are off limits if you want to resubmit, but be realistic when you pick your targets.
The truth is, there’s nothing preventing you from your plan to resubmit a query letter to someone who has already rejected your work. I wouldn’t take this approach if it seemed that agents just didn't understand or weren't interested in your work as a whole, though. You might want to step back and take a closer look at what you’re doing if you’ve gotten no positive responses. Try and figure out what the results of your unsuccessful submission round are telling you about this particular project, instead of rushing off to resubmit.
If You Plan to Resubmit Your Query …
Agents are renowned for remembering those who have submitted to them, even years later. Most of them use email inboxes which make it convenient to locate past submissions with a simple search. Thus, if you plan to resubmit, you should definitely mention in your query letter that the agent has seen a previous version of the project already.
Emphasize that the manuscript you want to resubmit has been revised (if that’s true, of course–more here on revised submission meaning). Otherwise, the agent might feel like the pitch seems familiar, and they’ll go digging. If you resubmit a project with no major changes to try and see whether they were paying attention or to trick them into considering it again, they won’t like it. (Believe it or not, some writers reason that the only way they could’ve been rejected was if the agent somehow made a mistake or didn’t read closely enough.)
Be forthcoming and honest that it’s not your first time in their slush pile, meaning that they’ve seen your work before to refresh their memories and make it easy for them to find your previous communication.
Here’s what you can’t know if you resubmit and the agent agrees to take another look: is their interest genuine or are they just being polite? This fear isn't completely out of the realm of possibility. Some agents will wonder why nobody has snapped the project up yet (which is obviously the case if you decided to resubmit), and this makes them less excited to read and consider again.
But sometimes the revise and resubmit strategy pays off, especially if you’ve learned a great deal about your craft in the meantime and turned around strong writing revision. Your decision to take a second stab at your submission list could turn a “no” into a “yes,” after all.
If you resubmit and still get declines, it might be time to move on to a new submission list of fresh agent or publisher targets … or a new project. After several rounds of submission and resubmission, you need to take your verdict and figure out how to move forward.
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