In my excitement of finally feeling “ready”/ “ready as I will ever be” to query my dream agent, I sent my cover email and first three chapters at 4pm on a Friday night. Now, on reflection, I am not sure if this was very wise. Fridays are probably not best days to send query letters and certainly not towards the close of a day- especially if I want to get noticed. Anyone’s mind would be on the weekend ahead rather than another query which will undoubtedly end up in the slush pile.
But I am having difficulty with finding that perfect time to
query. My job requires my attention from 8 am until 5pm (or later) every day
during the week. I only have time for a quick 15-minute lunch, and when I am in
school, I am often supervising students over my breaks and lunches. I barely
have 5 minutes to use the toilet, let alone construct and send a query email.
There is no good time in the week to send a query, leaving me only with
afternoons and weekends which, I feel, heighten the changes of my query being
missed. Now, I am not making excuses, I know there are many reasons why an
agent might decide to discard and not pursue a query letter, but I can’t help
but think that timing is one of them.
When do you recommend sending out query letters? What day of
the week? Time of day? What do you recommend in terms of getting noticed? I
would love to hear your thoughts. Please comment below.
You should try writing the emails whenever you can (4pm on a Friday) but then save the email and either have it scheduled to send at a specific time and date (I am sure there is a way to set this up) or send it one evening during the week. Maybe a Monday evening so that it is ready and in their inbox for when they get to work on the Tuesday :-)
ReplyDeleteI will have to look into whether it is possible to schedule them. I think it is possible too, but I am not the best with technology so will have it work out how it works, haha.
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