How to Know When it’s Time to Move On (From a Manuscript)
I’ve been asked a few times how to know when it’s time to move on from a manuscript that you’re querying.
This is a hard one.
In one sense, there’s no such thing as moving on from a manuscript. You’ve written it, and so now you get to enjoy it forever, along with all of your beta readers, your friends and family, and anyone else who you give it to to read.
But when it comes to querying a manuscript and when to stop, the answer depends on a lot of factors:
1. Have you queried all the agents on your list?
As I mentioned before, your agent list might have upwards of 70-100 agents on it, depending on your genre and age range. If you’ve queried all of the agents who were on your list, and gotten rejections from all of them, this is a sign that perhaps your story isn’t the one that’s going to get you your agent.
2. Have you given revision a serious effort?
When you query in batches, you should be evaluating your manuscript after every batch, depending on the feedback (or lack thereof) that you get from agents. If you’ve revised your manuscript as much as you’re able and used all the resources available to you (beta readers, critique partners, books and resources on craft, etc.) and you’re still hitting a brick wall while querying, this might be a sign that it’s time to move on from a manuscript.
3. Have you tried to understand what, if anything, about your manuscript doesn’t match the market?
Sometimes, there are unavoidable trends in the marketplace. You might be getting rejections from agents not because they don’t like your manuscript, but because they don’t think it matches the market. After all, they’re taking on clients not because they like their books, but because they like their books and think they can sell them.
For example, there was an anti-vampire story trend for a while. The market was saturated after Twilight and all the books its success inspired. If you’d written a vampire story back in 2020, you may have needed to shelve it for a few years and query it when the market shifted back towards wanting those stories again…which it did! (I sold a vampire book with my coauthor Ben Alderson in 2024.) Trends eventually reverse—this may mean shelving your manuscript just for a bit while you wait for the market to refresh.
But, it’s very important to understand if this is a market trend, or if you’re not meeting the expectations of the market in general. Are you querying a 230,000-word YA novel that you just absolutely can’t cut down? It’s not going to sell, even if it’s a great novel. It costs too much to print! Make sure that you conform to the market’s expectations for your age range and genre in the ways that matter.
So what to do if you’ve moved on?
Write another book! My first book didn’t get me an agent. My second one did. You learn something from every manuscript and each time you write a book, you’re going to get better at writing. (Plus, it’s fun!)