Karen writes: “Can you tell me how many queries you send to how many different markets in an average month — or averaged over a year? Obviously, a writer who queries simultaneously might be doing, for example, 6 queries to 60 markets per month, whereas a writer who queried one at a time might do 12 queries to 12 markets. I would find it helpful to know what your and Diana’s ‘output’ has been. Also, can you tell me about what percentage of your queries in a given year resulted in assignments, both when you started out and in whatever year you considered your earning-a-living breakthrough?”

This is a hard question because when it comes to queries, I’m, er, a bit disorganized. Some of my queries are full-on, multi-page affairs with quotes and bullet points and credentials paragraphs. These are Word files that go in a special “queries” folder and are easy to track. Others are quick notes or lists of ideas or letters of intro that I zap to editors, and these are saved only as e-mail files that are jumbled into a “follow up” e-mail box along with other communications with editors I hope to work with.

Doing a quick count, it looks like I wrote 20 or so new, full-length queries last year, but I also have 546 e-mails in my follow-up box from 2006; as I mentioned, these e-mails include quick queries, letters of introduction, lists of ideas, back-and-forths with editors, and other editor communications. As you become more experienced in freelancing, you may notice, as I have, that over the years you’re writing fewer and fewer complete queries and more and more quick notes and letters of introduction to editors. That’s because as you become a known quantity to editors, they’re more likely to assign articles to you without seeing a full query. I’m a regular writer for many editors now, so I don’t have to send them fleshed-out queries; however, I do write full queries when I want to break into a new magazine, or when I’m pitching an editor who still doesn’t consider me part of her “stable” of writers. For example, I used full queries last year to break into Health and Natural Health, and to sell a new idea to Redbook, which I hadn’t written for since 1999.

Of the estimated 20 new, full-length queries I wrote last year, about 75 percent ended up selling. I don’t know how many of my quick notes, lists, etc. sold, though, because I don’t keep track of those — I just take the money and run! My philosophy is to send out queries/ideas/intros/notes whenever the mood strikes me to do so, and luckily I like marketing myself so there are times when I’m sending out bunches at once. I also often reslant old queries and articles into new pitches, so those don’t really count to me as new queries.

Though I urge beginning writers to ditch the “no simultaneous submissions” rule and send their ideas out to several magazines at once, I rarely send out sim-subs these days as I’m much more likely to get interest/an acceptance from an editor than I was when I was starting out, partly because I now have a long list of credentials and partly because I’ve become much better at writing queries. Therefore, many of these queries were sent out to just one magazine or to a few magazines, one editor at a time. (I go into more detail on how I decide whether to send sim-subs in The Renegade Writer’s Query Letters That Rock.)

I don’t have numbers to back it up, but I know that when I was starting out I wrote far more full queries and sold fewer of them. And my stats may not be representative of writers as a whole; for example, I know that Diana sells almost every query she sends out.

As for what you should do — you should do what works for you. If you’re more organized than I am with your query letters, you can figure out the percentage of your ideas that have sold and use that as a rough guide for how many you should send out. For example, if 75% of your queries sell and you like/need to have seven assignments per month, you’ll need to send out about 10 queries per month depending on your circumstances.

As I mentioned in my August 2006 post Beware the Boards, don’t listen to writers who say you need to send out X number of queries every month or even that you need to come up with your own set number of monthly pitches. Writing is a very fluid business. Sometimes you’ll need to send out lots of queries; other times, you’ll get plenty of assignments from sending out letters of introduction; and sometimes an editor will come to you with an assignment out of the blue. Some assignments will pay $500, so you’ll need to get lots of them to make your income goal, and some will pay thousands, so you won’t need as many. All these circumstances affect how many queries you’ll need to or want to send out.

I hope this isn’t too confusing. Really, I always urge writers to find out what works for them and do it. “Rules” that you find on writing boards or in writing books, whether they’re about how many queries to send or how long your queries should be, rarely work for every writer. Take stock of where you are now and where you want to be, and make up your own rules.

Got a question for the Renegade Writers? Send it to questions [at] therenegadewriter [dot] com. [lf]

If you liked that post, you might also like:

• You Ask, I Answer: Should I Avoid Sending Queries on Certain Days?
• The Best Way to Get a Freelance Writing Assignment
• Break This Rule: Always Send Your Query to the E-Mail Address Listed in the Guidelines
• 8 Ways to Land New Writing Assignments (Not Just Queries!)
• 8 Ways to Land New Writing Assignments (Not Just Queries!)