Querying is a process almost every author aiming to get traditionally published has to go through. I say almost, because sometimes publishers will go to authors if they need extremely specific content. But for the most part, you have to query.

This process involves sending a query letter and a sample of your manuscript to literary agents. These agents are the people that will help you sell your book: if they decide to take you on as a client, it is their job to find an editor who will publish your work, help you understand your contract with your publishing house, and will help market your book. They don't make money until you make money, so selling your book is their top priority. Because agents make their living by selling books though, they need to be passionate about what they choose to acquire each year. They can also only acquire so much each year, so they cannot take on anything they don't truly think they can sell.

You can also on occasion query small presses and even editors, but this usually isn't the case. Some people have more success querying small presses, but many opt for the long road of querying agents. Agents are usually the ones who will get you into a major publishing house, or an imprint of one. The bigger the house, the better your chances of getting good publicity, an amazing cover that'll pull readers in, and possibly even a spot on the ever-elusive New York Times Bestseller list, aka every author's dream.

Now, most queries are rejections. This is something every author learns very quickly. If you get an offer within your first 10 or 20 queries, you're unbelievably lucky. Sometimes you'll get requests for partials or fulls: aka more material from your manuscript. I've had a couple of these requests in my time querying.

As of late March, I've sent over 70 queries, and had over 50 rejections. It's not an easy process to stay positive through.

What you see in the image above is my query spreadsheet, where I track every agent, editor, and publisher I want to query and have queried. Everything is color coded and I update this list weekly.

Pitch events are an opportunity for authors to connect with agents who want their work in an unconventional way. Event hosts create a specific hashtag, as well as genre and audience tags, and authors get the opportunity to Tweet a pitch for their novel. Yes, a pitch for a book in under 280 characters. It's just as challenging as it sounds. Each pitch event has specific guidelines, usually to limit what types of books can be pitched or what authors can pitch. On pitch days, you get a certain amount of pitches you can tweet: It's good to usually have a few variations to post. For most events, it's one pitch an hour for ten hours. Larger events have more restrictions.

During these events, it's a rule to not like other authors Tweets. If you like a pitch, it's customary to retweet it so it gets boosted in the event hashtag. Agents, Editors, and Publishers however are free to like all they want - and a like from any of them is a huge deal. A like means they want to see your query material, and usually more of your manuscript than they'd see from a traditional unsolicited query.

I've actually had a decent amount of success from these events, given what I was up against. I managed to pull between 1 and 4 likes in each event. In one of the biggest pitch events of the year, #PitMad, which happens quarterly, I was up against hundreds of thousands of authors for likes. I'm not kidding. The whole day of the event, the tag was number 1 on trending and had over 500k tweets by the end of the day. Even though they usually don't lead anywhere, the interest alone is something authors should be proud of. A good pitch, after all, is what an agent will need to sell your book to an editor.