Choosing a tool
Three honest fit questions for a writer deciding where her manuscript versions, her open submissions and her follow up dates should actually live.
Most independent authors start a round in a spreadsheet, add a market database once the list gets long, and end up with the query log in one place and the manuscript files in another. By the third round the question stops being which tool lists the most agents. It becomes which tool tells you, on a Tuesday morning, that the full request from March is now four weeks past the window the agent stated on her own submissions page.
DraftAndQuery is built for that second problem: numbered manuscript versions, a submission pipeline per title, response deadlines taken from the guidelines, and a follow up queue grouped by agent or press so one polite note covers everything they hold. The tools below solve overlapping but different problems, and for plenty of writers one of them is the better fit. Each page says plainly which writer that is.
DraftAndQuery vs QueryTracker
QueryTracker is built around finding US literary agents and recording what you sent them, while DraftAndQuery is built around the manuscript and the dates it is waiting on.
DraftAndQuery vs Duotrope
Duotrope is a market listing and tracking service built around periodicals and the writers who feed them, while DraftAndQuery is a pipeline for book length manuscripts moving through agents and presses.
DraftAndQuery vs Airtable
Airtable hands you a flexible database and expects you to design the submission system, while DraftAndQuery hands you the system already shaped around manuscripts, response windows and follow ups.
Free tools
Two small tools for the arithmetic that decides whether a book pays for itself and whether a query round fits inside the hours you actually have.
Working document
Everything that has to be true before a batch goes out, and the record that has to exist the moment it does.
When two of these look close on paper, the difference usually shows up in month five, when an agent replies with notes and you need to know which draft she is holding. Book a walk through with one of your own titles and its open submissions in front of you. Half an hour is enough to see whether the pipeline matches the way you actually query.