GBRK
15d ago
I thought your query largely made logical sense, with its main problems being misplaced emphasis-- both spending words on things that didn't really matter, and and not spending words where they'd count the most. I am particularly genre-savvy so it have an easier time extrapolating compared to more naive readers, but I think the same is true of agents so you should weight my advice higher. (Do the opposite if I ever review your actual text, though-- that needs to be intelligible to everyone except the bottom 10% of your target audience.)
In general, pubtips seems to have more variance than qtcritique since more of the qtcritique people are regulars. You'll get some really good advice from veterans, but also some really clueless (though well-intentioned) advice from total noobs. In comparison, the main problem with qtcritique seems to be that the star rating system encourages sycophancy, so there are a few power users that give lots of fairly middling advice while visibly making the same errors over and over again in their submissions.
I would suggest looking at the profiles of the people who gave you feedback to survey the other queries they reviewed. Without reading their reviews, identify what you think are the biggest problems with the 3rd party queries. Then, compare those things to what the reviewers said. If you're largely in agreement with them, then their complaints are probably accurate. If you disagree with their points, it might be a difference in genre preference that you can take into account. If you think their overview is facile, you can safely ignore them. If they surprise you with the depth of their insight, cut out their eyes and transplant their kekkei genkai.
GBRK
16d ago
I've been writing and re-writing my query ad nauseum for about a month and a half, and in the process developed what feels like a genuinely new skill: the ability to take a sentence, and determine what sentence should logically follow. That might sound like table-stakes literacy, but it genuinely feels like I've turned on my mangekyo sharingan. Before, I would look at my writing-- now I can see it. I can consciously identify what elements of a sentence demand elaboration, put them together with explicit goals for where I want the succeeding sentence to take me, and finally identify possible sentences that satisfy all relevant criteria.
Right now, I'm very slow at applying this skill. It takes me about an hour to edit 100 words, and frankly the cognitive load is so high I don't think I'll ever get more than a 2x or 3x speedup. Whenever I get back to actually writing (as opposed to editing), I'll need to retrain my brain to think in flow-state vibe-coder first-draft mode. But whenever I reach a particularly high-stakes passage, I'll have my dojutsu waiting in my eye sockets.
If anyone wants to copy my technique, I would suggest briefly focusing on a type of art that's hyper-constrained in word count. Flash fiction, light novel titles, slam poetry (but not the irritating kind), song lyrics, elevator pitches, and of course query letters. Write and re-write as many times as it takes to be perfect-- and get iterative feedback.
Props to /u/FtttG for introducing me to qtcritique, I wouldn't have gotten here without that.
GBRK
28d ago
I would agree with your buddy that the publishing world is structurally biased against men but would disagree that it's particularly biased against white men. The main causal mechanism is that the vast majority of newer agents (i.e., the ones actively looking for debut authors) and acquisition editors are women (or gay men), and naturally they're going to prefer books that speak to their interests and experiences. That selects against the kind of content men want to read and right write. However, excluding a few niche ethnicity-specific genres, a white male should have as much success as a pakistani woman if they're both writing romantasy targeted towards white woman... and as little success if they're both writing hard sci-fi targeted towards guys.
(And then there's the knock-on effect that mostly publishing stuff women would be interested in reading makes men less interested in reading and male-targeted books less likely to sell, which makes agents and editors even less likely to pick up that kind of book.)
All that being said, I wouldn't underestimate the potentially of the literary world to change suddenly and violently. There's a small but relevant number of agents on MSWL citing specifically that they want the next Dungeon Crawler Carl, or that authors shouldn't be afraid to submit "boy books" to them. Aethon books also seems to be fairly successful, and I heard the author of the percy jackson series is starting a new imprint to focus on books that appeal to the same audience his does. None of that is going to help me publish my book because I suspect my book is unmarketable in ways completely orthogonal to the anti-male-content bias, but it is heartening to see.
TBH my ethnic identity is fairly trendy and also relevant to the book so I do mention it, but... I knowingly and deliberately wrote a book that catered to my interests at the expense of probable market reach. Within the constraints of having written something visibly created by a neoliberal catholic furry I'm still going to do my best to get published, but I don't think exploiting my ethnic identity is going to have much of an impact one way or the other.
You know, that tweet actually gives me a lot of hope. Without assuming intent, Trump is currently in a position where he has the power to create clients (instituting broad tariffs, but then making carveouts for just the companies that agree to bend the knee; going after illegal immigrants, but only in the places and workplaces that are politically opposed to him), and the cultural conditions around ICE's formation make it a force intrinsically predisposed to become his personal army (he got them a massive increase in funding, he got them their massive signing bonuses, and they're very aware that maintaining those things requires keeping his opponents out of power.) I'm therefore heartened to see the formation of a unified, counterbalancing force. I thought the blue tribe was too limp-wristed and fractious to ever gather the hard power required to physically (as opposed to memetically) counter the tribe of the 2nd amendment, but I'm glad to be wrong. I would obviously prefer that both sides disarm, but I'm sure that's impossible because-- among other reasons-- people are going to reply to me arguing that Trump is responding to some n-2 step on the escalation ladder and disarmament would necessarily require the blue tribe to not just disband their current militias, but also willingly bring into effect exactly the kind of deportation actions the current militia is trying to prevent.
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