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How many copies before an independently published novel pays for itself
Enter your production spend, your list price and your print cost, and see the blended margin per sale and the number of copies that clears the bill.
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How long a full query round takes when you have a day job
Set your list size, your batch size and the hours you can give submissions each week, and see how long the round really runs and how much silence to expect.
Writers plan query rounds as if the sending were the work. The sending takes minutes. What takes the evening is reading the guidelines, checking whether the agent has closed, cutting the sample to the exact page count she asks for, adjusting the comparison titles, and logging what went where so month five is not a mystery.
This planner turns that into a calendar. It tells you how many batches your list becomes, how many hours each batch costs at your tailoring pace, how many weeks the whole round runs against the hours you actually have, and roughly how many of those submissions will simply never answer.
Your result
Hours to prepare one batch
4.7
Desk time for a single batch before any reply comes back.
Batches in this round
8
How many sittings it takes to work through the whole list.
Weeks to work the full list
22
Preparation spread across your real week, plus the last stated window.
Submissions that never answer
27
These close on a date you set rather than on a reply that arrives.
The week count assumes batches go out in sequence, which is what most writers do so the pitch can be revised on early feedback.
Why batching beats sending the whole list at once
If the first eight queries all come back as form passes with no partial requests, the problem is usually in the letter or the opening pages, and you want to know that before the other fifty two go out. A batch of six to ten gives you a readable signal without burning the list. Writers who send everything in one weekend have no second chance with the agents they wanted most.
The planner assumes sequential batches for that reason. If you genuinely send everything at once the calendar shrinks, but so does your ability to fix anything. Put your real batch size in and see what the trade actually costs you in weeks.
Where the hours come from when you have a job
Three hours a week is a realistic number for a writer with a full time job, a household and a manuscript she is still revising. It is also enough for roughly one batch every fortnight at a thirty five minute tailoring pace. That means a sixty name list runs most of a year before the last stated window even closes.
Seeing that laid out changes decisions. Some writers cut the list to the forty agents who genuinely represent the category. Some drop tailoring time by building a reusable core letter and only changing the personalization paragraph. Both are better than discovering in month eight that the round has stalled because there was never time for it.
Questions about this calculator
Is thirty five minutes per submission realistic?
It is a fair average once you include reading the guidelines properly and formatting the sample to what is asked for. Agents with detailed wish lists take longer. Presses with a form to fill in can take much longer. Time yourself on the next three and put your own figure in.
Why does the calculator count submissions that never reply?
Because a no response policy is common and those submissions otherwise sit in your list forever. Knowing roughly how many will go silent tells you how important a close out date is. In DraftAndQuery each submission gets one, so the live pipeline stays honest.
Does the week count include revision time between batches?
No, it only counts the desk time to prepare and send. If you plan to revise the opening pages after the first batch, add those weeks yourself. Most writers who revise mid round add somewhere between two and six weeks to the total.
More free tools and working documents
Working document
The submission packet checklist for agents, presses and contests
Everything that has to be true before a batch goes out, and the record that has to exist the moment it does.
From the estimate to the round itself
The figure above is a planning number, and it stops doing much work the day the first query goes out. From then on the questions all carry dates: which draft is with which agent, what materials she was sent, and whether the stated window has run out yet. Ask for a demo and bring the manuscript you are about to send.