--- title: "The October Query Window: Fantasy Literary Agents Accepting Submissions in Late 2026" url: https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i canonical: https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i language: en published: 2026-10-11T10:49:15.294Z category: "AI for Creators" author: "Mac" summary: "Of every hundred queries an agent reads, perhaps two or three earn a request for pages. That is not a rumor. That is arithmetic, and it is the arithmetic you walk into every time you press send. The g" html_alternate: https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i llm_index: https://lacunai.com/blog/llms.txt atom_feed: https://lacunai.com/blog/feed.xml --- # The October Query Window: Fantasy Literary Agents Accepting Submissions in Late 2026 > Of every hundred queries an agent reads, perhaps two or three earn a request for pages. That is not a rumor. That is arithmetic, and it is the arithmetic you walk into every time you press send. The g ## Table of contents - [The October Query Window](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#the-october-query-window) - [Why October Is a Better Query Month Than You Think](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#why-october-is-a-better-query-month-than-you-think) - [The Fantasy Market Landscape, Late 2026](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#the-fantasy-market-landscape-late-2026) - [Cozy Fantasy: Still Warm](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#cozy-fantasy-still-warm) - [Romantasy: Fatigue and Hunger at the Same Time](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#romantasy-fatigue-and-hunger-at-the-same-time) - [Gritty Epic Fantasy: A Quiet Return](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#gritty-epic-fantasy-a-quiet-return) - [Mythic and Indigenous-Inspired Fantasy: Real Demand, Real Standards](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#mythic-and-indigenous-inspired-fantasy-real-demand-real-standards) - [Dark Academia and Adjacent Campus Fantasy](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#dark-academia-and-adjacent-campus-fantasy) - [Seven Fantasy Literary Agents Accepting Submissions in October](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#seven-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-in-october) - [Jim McCarthy, Dystel, Goderich and Bourret](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#jim-mccarthy-dystel-goderich-and-bourret) - [Maria Vicente, P.S. Literary Agency](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#maria-vicente-p-s-literary-agency) - [Hannah Bowman, Liza Dawson Associates](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#hannah-bowman-liza-dawson-associates) - [Seth Fishman, The Gernert Company](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#seth-fishman-the-gernert-company) - [Kurestin Armada, Root Literary](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#kurestin-armada-root-literary) - [Caitlin McDonald, Donald Maass Literary Agency](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#caitlin-mcdonald-donald-maass-literary-agency) - [DongWon Song, Howard Morhaim Literary Agency](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#dongwon-song-howard-morhaim-literary-agency) - [How to Verify That a Fantasy Agent Is Actually Open](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#how-to-verify-that-a-fantasy-agent-is-actually-open) - [Word Count: The Silent Rejection](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#word-count-the-silent-rejection) - [Before You Query: The Self-Edit Gate](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#before-you-query-the-self-edit-gate) - [The Story Bible Is Not a Luxury](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#the-story-bible-is-not-a-luxury) - [Why Privacy Matters Before You Query](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#why-privacy-matters-before-you-query) - [Building the Query Letter](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#building-the-query-letter) - [Paragraph One: The Hook](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#paragraph-one-the-hook) - [Paragraph Two: The Three-Act Pitch](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#paragraph-two-the-three-act-pitch) - [Paragraph Three: Book Details and Comps](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#paragraph-three-book-details-and-comps) - [The Rules for Comps](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#the-rules-for-comps) - [Housekeeping and the Bio](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#housekeeping-and-the-bio) - [Formatting the Pages You Attach](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#formatting-the-pages-you-attach) - [Running the Campaign: A Sensible October Schedule](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#running-the-campaign-a-sensible-october-schedule) - [Mistakes That Sink Fantasy Queries](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#mistakes-that-sink-fantasy-queries) - [When Querying Is Not the Only Road](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#when-querying-is-not-the-only-road) - [A Final Checklist Before You Press Send](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#a-final-checklist-before-you-press-send) - [The Last Word](https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i#the-last-word) ## The October Query Window Every October, the question lands in my inbox with the regularity of a tax notice: which fantasy literary agents accepting submissions should I be querying right now? It is a fair question, and a hopeful one, which is why it deserves a straight answer instead of a cheerful one. Of every hundred queries an agent reads, perhaps two or three earn a request for pages. That is not a rumor. That is arithmetic, and it is the arithmetic you walk into every time you press send. The good news is that the other ninety-seven are mostly lost for reasons you can control: wrong agent, wrong word count, wrong first paragraph, wrong week. This guide is about the week. Specifically, the October query window, that strange, hopeful stretch between the back-to-school scramble and the holiday slowdown when agents have cleared their summer reading piles and are hungry for something new (they will deny the hunger, but their inboxes tell the truth). If you write fantasy and you have a finished, polished manuscript, late 2026 is a reasonable moment to move. Let's make sure you move well. Pour yourself something. We'll start with the lay of the land. ## Why October Is a Better Query Month Than You Think Writers love to repeat folklore about when to query. Never in December. Never in August. Avoid Mondays, avoid Fridays, avoid anything with a full moon. Most of this is noise. A good query in a bad week still beats a bad query in a good week. But there is a real seasonal pattern, and it works in your favor this month. Many agents spend the summer catching up on client edits and submitting projects to editors. By late September the acquisitions calendar at the big publishers turns toward the following year's lists, and agents start thinking about what they want to pitch in January. They are reading with intent. They are also, frankly, a little less buried than they will be after the new year, when resolution season floods every inbox in the industry. Here is the practical consequence. If you query in the first three weeks of October, you land in a window where responses tend to come faster than average and where a full request has time to be read before the holidays. If you wait until November, you drift toward the slow stretch where requests sit in a folder until January. (Nobody is rude about it. It is simply human nature, and a Thanksgiving week is a Thanksgiving week.) One more thing before the profiles. Querying is not a single act. It is a campaign, and campaigns run in batches. Plan to send six to eight queries in your first wave, wait two to three weeks, and adjust based on what comes back. We will return to that. First, you need to know what you are selling into. ## The Fantasy Market Landscape, Late 2026 Fantasy is not one market. It is five or six overlapping markets that happen to share dragons. An agent who adores gritty, grim-eyed epic fantasy may feel nothing for cozy fantasy, and vice versa. Knowing which room you are standing in changes everything about how you pitch. ### Cozy Fantasy: Still Warm Cozy fantasy, the bakery-and-bookshop, low-stakes, high-comfort branch of the genre, had its breakout years and has settled into a durable lane rather than a fad. Agents are no longer asking "is this a trend?" They are asking "is this one distinctive?" A fantasy café run by a retired necromancer was charming three years ago. Now it needs a second idea underneath it: a real emotional wound, a surprising setting, a voice nobody else has. If you write cozy, the fatigue is not with the form. It is with the interchangeable version of the form. Mara, a fictional author with a manuscript about a rural witch who runs a lending library, does not need to abandon her book. She needs to find what her library does that no other fictional library does, and put that in the first two lines of her pitch. ### Romantasy: Fatigue and Hunger at the Same Time Both things are true, and writers get confused because they hear only one of them at a time. There is fatigue with the identical version: the fae court, the enemies-to-lovers arc, the heroine with a secret power and a brooding prince, rendered in familiar beats. Editors have seen hundreds of these and the shelf is crowded. There is also real hunger for romantasy that does something structurally different. Worlds with unusual political systems. Romance that is built into the magic rather than bolted onto the plot. Queer romantasy with stakes that are not only about desire. Slow-burn romantasy where the central relationship is a genuine intellectual partnership. The category is not closed. The lazy entry is. Ask yourself a plain question. If you removed the romance, would the plot still stand? If yes, you probably have fantasy with a love story, and you should pitch it as that. If no, you have romantasy, and you should be very clear about the engine that makes it fresh. ### Gritty Epic Fantasy: A Quiet Return After years in the shadow of romance and cozy, adult epic fantasy is drawing renewed attention, particularly the kind with moral complexity, political intrigue, and a wide cast. The appetite is for ambition, not imitation. Agents want to see worldbuilding that feels lived in and prose that trusts the reader. This is also the category with the highest word counts, the longest drafts, and the most dangerous continuity problems. A magic system with an inconsistent cost, a timeline that does not add up, a character who gets a new eye color in chapter nineteen: epic fantasy readers notice everything. If your book lives here, the section on story bibles later in this piece is not optional reading. ### Mythic and Indigenous-Inspired Fantasy: Real Demand, Real Standards Agents are actively seeking fantasy rooted in specific cultural mythologies: West African, South Asian, East Asian, Latin American, Indigenous North American, Pacific, and many others. The demand is genuine. So is the scrutiny. The rule is simple and it is not negotiable. Write what you can write with depth. If the tradition is yours, say so briefly in your bio, because it signals authority. If it is not, you need a documented research process, sensitivity readers, and a pitch that shows you understand the difference between inspiration and extraction. Agents can spot a surface-level borrowing in about two sentences. ### Dark Academia and Adjacent Campus Fantasy The moody, candlelit, secret-society-in-the-library branch still has a pulse, but it has split. The pure aesthetic version (leather books, tragic prose, privileged students with terrible secrets) has been done to the edge of parody. What is working now is dark academia with a point: a magic school that interrogates its own class system, a scholarly fantasy built around a real discipline like linguistics or archaeology, a campus story with a mystery that actually resolves. Figure 1: Where your book sits on the map determines which agents will actually want it. ## Seven Fantasy Literary Agents Accepting Submissions in October A necessary caution before the list. Agent preferences shift, lists open and close, and an agent who was accepting submissions in spring may be closed by autumn. Treat every profile below as a starting point for your own research, not as gospel. Verify current status on the agency website, cross-check on Manuscript Wish List, and confirm the agent's sales record on Publishers Marketplace. Check that the agency is a member of the Association of American Literary Agents, which holds members to a baseline of ethical practice. And please. No one in this list charges reading fees. If a "literary agent" ever asks you for money upfront, close the tab. One practical note on the links below. Each agent's profile ends with a direct path to the agency's own submission page. Click through, read the current guidelines in full, and send exactly what they ask for. Agencies change their forms and page counts more often than you would think, and the live page always beats my summary. ### Jim McCarthy, Dystel, Goderich and Bourret McCarthy has long been a name in genre fiction, with a client list that spans fantasy, science fiction, and big-voiced commercial work. He has historically been drawn to ambitious worldbuilding, strong character engines, and series with a clear sense of scale. If your manuscript has a distinctive hook and the sort of momentum that can sustain a trilogy, he is worth a careful look. What to know: Agency guidelines typically specify a query plus pages, sent through their online system or a designated email address, so read the current instructions closely. Read the submission guidelines and send your query via the Dystel, Goderich and Bourret Submissions Page. Pitfall: Books pitched as "the next big series" with no evidence the first volume stands alone. Prove the single book works. ### Maria Vicente, P.S. Literary Agency Vicente represents a notable range of speculative fiction and has shown strong interest in voice-driven fantasy, including work for younger readers. She is the kind of agent who responds to a character you cannot stop listening to. Pitches that lead with voice, specific emotional stakes, and a fresh setting tend to align with her stated interests. What to know: P.S. Literary typically accepts queries by email or its submission form, with a pasted sample, so check the current page count requested. Review the query guidelines and submit through the P.S. Literary Agency Submissions Page. Pitfall: Generic chosen-one framing. If your protagonist is destined, make the destiny a problem, not a convenience. ### Hannah Bowman, Liza Dawson Associates Bowman is a thoughtful, deeply genre-literate agent who has built a reputation for working with fantasy and science fiction authors and for her own long familiarity with the field. She tends to respond to strong worldbuilding paired with real emotional depth, and to books that treat genre conventions as craft rather than checklist. What to know: Liza Dawson Associates takes queries through its website or QueryManager, so follow the form exactly as presented. Read the guidelines and send your query through the Liza Dawson Associates Submissions Page, which links to their QueryManager form. Pitfall: Worldbuilding presented as lore dump. If your query spends three sentences naming kingdoms, she will stop reading. Name the person and the problem first. ### Seth Fishman, The Gernert Company Fishman works across commercial and literary lists, and has a track record with high-concept fiction that crosses categories. For a fantasy writer, that matters: his interest tends to land on books that could break out of the genre shelf, with a hook strong enough to explain in one sentence and prose that rewards a second read. What to know: The Gernert Company typically asks for a query with a sample, and the agency site lists current directions, so check before sending. Read the agency's requirements and submit via the Gernert Company Submission Guidelines. Pitfall: Pitching purely as "for fans of" with no sense of what makes your book itself. At this level, your voice has to carry the pitch. ### Kurestin Armada, Root Literary Armada has built a list that leans toward voice-forward, emotionally resonant speculative fiction, and she has long been a visible presence in the community discussing what she wants to see. She is especially worth researching if your book has queer protagonists, found-family structures, or a heart-forward approach to stakes. What to know: Root Literary uses an online submission form with a query and a short opening sample, so follow it exactly. Check the current instructions and send your materials through the Root Literary Submissions Page. Pitfall: Treating representation as a selling point instead of a lived reality of the story. Characters are people first, labels never. ### Caitlin McDonald, Donald Maass Literary Agency The Donald Maass Literary Agency has a storied reputation in speculative fiction, and McDonald has been associated with fantasy and science fiction with serious craft ambitions. Maass agents tend to be rigorous about what makes a book work at the scene level, so expect tension on the page, not only in the premise. What to know: The agency's guidelines typically call for a query with a short sample, submitted through the form or email listed on their site. Read the full guidelines and submit via the Donald Maass Literary Agency Submissions Page. Pitfall: A strong concept with soft scene-level stakes. If your opening pages are lovely and static, the premise cannot rescue them. ### DongWon Song, Howard Morhaim Literary Agency Song is widely known in speculative fiction circles, with a list that champions bold, genre-bending fantasy and science fiction and an openness to authors whose work challenges conventions. If your book is strange in a deliberate way, structurally inventive, politically alive, formally ambitious, he is one of the first names on the research list. What to know: Howard Morhaim Literary Agency accepts queries per its website, usually through a submission form or designated email, so verify current status. Confirm their current requirements and send your query via the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency Submissions Page. Pitfall: Strangeness for its own sake. Experimental structure must serve the story, and the query should explain, in a sentence, why. Figure 2: A research snapshot for building your October query list. Verify every field against the agency website before sending. ## How to Verify That a Fantasy Agent Is Actually Open An agent profile, even a good one, has a shelf life. Here is the three-step check that takes about eight minutes per agent and saves you from the most common wasted query. One: visit the agency website and read the current submission page. Not a blog post from 2022. The live page. Two: search the agent on Manuscript Wish List to see their most recent stated tastes, then read their last few social posts or interviews if they have them. Three: log into QueryTracker and read the recent comments and response times. If an agent has not answered anyone in six months, that is information. If all three check out, add the agent to your list. If any one fails, move them to a maybe pile and look at someone else. ## Word Count: The Silent Rejection Word count is the single fastest way to be declined without anyone reading a word of your prose. It signals whether you understand the market, and agents use it as a quick filter because it is easy to see and hard to argue with. Here are the working ranges for fantasy in 2026. - Adult fantasy (debut): 90,000 to 120,000 words is the standard window. Under 80,000 can read as thin for the genre. Over 120,000 begins to worry agents about a cost-of-production problem for a first book. - Epic and secondary-world adult fantasy: A little more latitude, up to roughly 130,000 to 140,000 words, but every thousand over 120,000 needs to earn its place. Debuts at 160,000 are a hard sell. - Cozy fantasy: Often shorter, 70,000 to 95,000 words, matching the lower-stakes, higher-comfort reading experience. - Romantasy: Frequently runs longer than other adult fantasy, 90,000 to 120,000 words, with some leeway on the high end if the pacing holds. - YA fantasy: 70,000 to 100,000 words. Anything over 100,000 for a debut raises an eyebrow, and over 110,000 usually earns a pass. - Middle grade fantasy: 40,000 to 60,000 words, though this guide focuses on adult and YA. The threshold that matters most is the ceiling. If your fantasy is 135,000 words and you are a debut, you have a decision to make before you query. Trim, split, or accept that some agents will pass on count alone. Cutting 15,000 words from an overlong draft is almost always an improvement anyway, which brings us to the part nobody enjoys. ## Before You Query: The Self-Edit Gate Elena, another fictional writer, finishes her draft in August. She is thrilled. She reads it once, fixes some typos, and by mid-September she is querying. By late October she has a stack of form rejections and no idea why. The reason is almost never the typos. It is the structural problems that a first read-through cannot see: the sagging middle, the protagonist whose goal shifts without explanation, the antagonist who vanishes for eighty pages, the magic system that solves problems it should have caused. These are developmental issues, and they hide inside a draft precisely because the author knows what everything is supposed to mean. There is a longer treatment of this in The Developmental Edit Nobody Warns You About (And How AI Catches What You Miss), and I would encourage you to read it before you send a single query. The short version: do a structural pass focused on three questions. Does the protagonist want something specific, and does the want escalate? Does each act turn on a decision the protagonist makes, rather than something that happens to them? Does the ending pay off what the opening promised? If you cannot answer yes to all three, you are not ready to query. That is not a verdict on your talent. It is a verdict on this draft, and drafts can be fixed. ### The Story Bible Is Not a Luxury Fantasy carries a burden that other genres do not: you are responsible for the consistency of an entire invented world. Agents reading your sample pages and, later, your full manuscript will catch contradictions that you stopped seeing months ago. A river that flows north in chapter three and south in chapter thirty. A rule about magic that the hero breaks without consequence. A character who is "the last of her line" despite a living brother two chapters later. This is the exact failure explored in The Broken Chapter Four: Why Outlines Collapse and How Story Bibles Save Them. The principle is plain: if you keep the rules of your world in your head, they will bend. If you keep them in a living document, they will hold. A good story bible tracks the magic system (its source, its cost, its limits), geography, timeline, character facts, and the promises you have made to the reader that you must keep. This is where Lacunai earns a mention, because it was built for exactly this stage of the process. Lacunai is a local-first desktop studio for novelists: an offline story bible, a continuity engine that flags contradictions across chapters, and a distraction-free writing environment, all running on your own machine. For a fantasy writer about to query, that continuity check is worth more than another round of polish on the opening paragraph. ### Why Privacy Matters Before You Query One more thing about where you work. A great many writers draft in browser-based tools, and a great many of those tools process your text on remote servers. For an unpublished manuscript that you are about to pitch to the industry, that is a real consideration. Your invented world, your magic system, your character names, your unusual premise, are your intellectual property before they are anyone's product. The argument is laid out fully in Your Manuscript Never Leaves the Desk: The Case for Local-First Writing Software. In brief: if the manuscript lives on your machine and goes nowhere until you decide to send it, there is nothing to leak, scrape, or subpoena. That peace of mind is not a trivial thing in the weeks before a query campaign, when you are editing obsessively and sharing nothing. ## Building the Query Letter A query letter has one job: to make a busy professional want to read your pages. It is not a synopsis, a summary of your themes, or a resume. It is a pitch, and it has a recognizable shape. The full anatomy lives in Anatomy of a Query Letter That Actually Gets Requested, but here is the working model for fantasy specifically. Think of it as three short paragraphs plus housekeeping. ### Paragraph One: The Hook One to three sentences. Your protagonist, their situation, and the thing that makes this story different. Not the world. Not the history. The person and the problem. Weak: "In the kingdom of Valdrenn, where magic is drawn from the memories of the dead, an ancient prophecy foretells the fall of the Seven Houses." Stronger: "Seventeen-year-old Ilse earns her living selling the memories of the recently dead to the nobles who rule her city. When she sells one she should not have, she learns the memory belongs to a woman who is not dead at all." Notice what the second version does. It starts with a person. It shows the world through her job rather than an encyclopedia entry. It ends on a question that makes you want paragraph two. That is the whole trick, and it is harder than it looks. ### Paragraph Two: The Three-Act Pitch This is the heart of the letter and it is where most fantasy queries collapse into a plot recap. Do not summarize the book. Give the shape of the book in three beats. Act one: what the protagonist wants and what disrupts it. Act two: the escalation, the complication, the choice that costs her something. Act three: the stakes at their highest, framed as a dilemma rather than a spoiler. You do not need to reveal the ending in a query, but you do need to show that there is one, and that it is earned. Keep it to four to six sentences. Name two or three characters at most. If a character does not change the protagonist's choices, they do not belong in the pitch. ### Paragraph Three: Book Details and Comps Title, genre, word count, and one to two comparative titles. This is also where you name the audience. "THE MEMORY MARKET is a 98,000-word adult fantasy, complete as a standalone with series potential." ### The Rules for Comps Comparative titles trip up more writers than any other element of the query. The rules are few. - Recent. Published in the last three to five years. Citing a book from 1998 tells the agent you have not read the current market. - Adjacent, not identical. You are not claiming to be the next anything. You are saying your book lives near these books. - Not the mega-hits. Do not compare yourself to the biggest bestsellers in the genre. It reads as presumption. - One or two. Two is plenty. Five is a confession that you do not know where your book belongs. - Mix the angles. One comp for tone and audience, one for premise or structure, if you can. Never write that your book has "no comparisons" or is "like nothing else on the market." Agents hear that as "I have not read widely." Every book has neighbors. ### Housekeeping and the Bio A one- to two-sentence bio is enough. Relevant credentials matter (publications, a degree in a pertinent field, lived expertise in the culture you write about). Irrelevant ones do not. If you have none, say nothing. A short, confident letter with no bio beats a padded one every time. Close with a thank-you and your contact details. That is all. Figure 3: The anatomy of a fantasy query, annotated. Notice how little of it is about the world. ## Formatting the Pages You Attach Most agents ask for a sample, usually the first five to ten pages or the first chapter, pasted into the body of the email or the submission form. A few minimal rules apply. Paste the text as plain text. No fancy fonts, no headers, no images. If the guidelines say to paste, paste. If they say attach, send a clean file in the format requested. Never attach a document when the instructions say to paste, because many agents will not open attachments from strangers. Include the chapter title and number if it appears in your manuscript, and nothing else. Skip the map. Skip the prologue unless your book genuinely cannot start without it (and think hard about whether it can). Skip the dedication. Your first page is the most valuable real estate you own, so spend it on your protagonist in motion, not on epigraphs and worldbuilding preamble. Check that your sample opens at a moment of consequence. Not a dream, not a character waking up, not a lengthy description of weather. Start where something is already going wrong. ## Running the Campaign: A Sensible October Schedule You now have the pieces. Here is how to assemble them without losing your mind. Week one (first week of October): Finalize your list of twenty to twenty-five agents, ranked by fit. Prepare your query letter, your sample pages in each required format, and a tracking spreadsheet. Set up a QueryTracker account and log every submission with the date, route, and agent. Week two: Send your first wave of six to eight queries, mixing a couple of top-choice agents with several strong-fit agents. Do not send everything at once. If the query has a flaw, you want to find out before it has been seen by all twenty-five. Weeks three and four: Watch the responses. If you get zero requests from eight queries, the letter or the opening pages need work. Revise and send the next wave with the improvements. If you get one or two requests, you are in a healthy range for this market, and you can proceed with your second wave of the same material. Early November: Send the second wave. Respond promptly to every full request, and have your complete manuscript polished and ready before you send the first query, not after. A note on emotional logistics. You will be tempted to refresh your inbox forty times a day. Don't. Check twice daily, at fixed times. Silence is the normal state of querying, and a rejection, even a form one, is not a judgment of your book. It is one agent's answer on one day. ## Mistakes That Sink Fantasy Queries After you have read enough queries, certain failures repeat with a regularity that borders on ritual. Here are the ones to avoid. The world tour. The query opens with three sentences about the geography and political structure of your realm before any human being appears. Start with the person. The invented-word avalanche. Five fictional proper nouns in the first paragraph, none of which the reader can anchor. Use as few as possible, and make each one earn its place. The prophecy opening. Unless the prophecy is doing something genuinely unexpected, lead with something else. Agents have read ten thousand prophecies. The wrong category claim. Calling a 160,000-word manuscript "YA," or a dark, violent book "cozy." Mislabeling your own book tells the agent you have not read the shelf you are standing on. The series pitch with no standalone. Saying "this is book one of a seven-book epic" is, for a debut, a red flag. Pitch a complete story with potential for more. The mass mailing. Sending the identical letter to forty agents with no personalization. A one-sentence, sincere reference to why you chose this agent costs thirty seconds and shows you did your homework. ## When Querying Is Not the Only Road It would be dishonest to write an entire guide about querying without admitting the truth: traditional publishing is not the right path for every fantasy novelist. Some books, particularly long series, cozy serials, and genre-blended work that does not map neatly onto a publisher's list, may find a better home through self-publishing, and some authors thrive on a hybrid model, keeping rights and control while building an audience. If you are weighing that choice, From Raw Manuscript to KDP: The Frictionless Self-Publishing Pipeline walks through the practical path from finished draft to published book. It is not a consolation prize. For many writers it is simply a different strategy, and the work you have done on your query, your pitch, and your story bible serves either route. You can also try the traditional route first and move to independent publishing later, if the market does not respond to the book you wrote. Decide based on what you want, not on what you fear. Do you want an editor's guidance and a publisher's distribution muscle? Query. Do you want speed, control, and a direct line to readers? Look at the other road. Neither is wrong. ## A Final Checklist Before You Press Send Before the first email goes out, run this list. Everything on it should be a yes. - The manuscript is complete, revised, and within the word count range for its category. - A structural self-edit has been done, and the story bible confirms the world is consistent. - The query letter leads with a person and a problem, includes a clear three-beat pitch, and names one or two recent comps. - Each agent on the list has been verified as currently open and genuinely interested in your kind of fantasy. - Each submission follows that agent's exact format, whether pasted pages, attachment, or form. - A tracking system is in place, and the first wave is limited to six to eight queries. That is the whole job. It is not glamorous. It is research, patience, and a willingness to look squarely at your own pages and ask whether they are doing what you think they are doing. ## The Last Word The October window is real, but it is not magic. No agent is waiting for a manuscript because the leaves are turning. They are waiting for a book that is ready, pitched clearly, and sent to the right person. So do the unglamorous work. Fix the middle. Build the bible. Trim to the right length. Write a letter that starts with a person. Pick your agents with care, and send them your best work in the right format at the right time. Then do the hardest thing in publishing. Wait. And while you wait, start the next book. For deeper research on specific agents and current open lists, keep QueryTracker, Manuscript Wish List, and Publishers Marketplace open in adjacent tabs, and confirm agency legitimacy through the Association of American Literary Agents. And if you want a quiet, offline place to build the story bible and run the continuity check before you query, take a look at Lacunai's plans. Your manuscript will thank you. (It will not, being a manuscript, but you will feel better.) --- Source: https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i Markdown alternate: https://lacunai.com/blog/the-october-query-window-fantasy-literary-agents-accepting-submissions-i.md