Making Memoir Magic

So You Want to Query your Memoir? Start Here

• Kerry Kriseman

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0:00 | 16:15

Querying your memoir can feel intimidating. Not writing it. Not revising it. But sending that query letter to an agent and hoping they say yes? That’s the real challenge.

In this episode of Making Memoir Magic, I walk memoir writers through the querying process, sharing practical tips and strategies that make it easier to navigate. We cover:

  • How to find comparative titles (comp titles) for your memoir—even recent ones published in the last five years
  • Where to research agents who actually represent memoir
  • Tools and resources to streamline your querying process
  • A gentle reality check on patience, rejection, and the memoir publishing journey

Plus, I give a peek inside Module 3 of my course, Make Memoir Magic, where I teach memoir writers how to position their stories in the marketplace and understand publishing paths.

Whether you’re just finishing your manuscript or ready to send your first query, this episode is packed with insights to help you move from “I have a story” to “I have a story—and I know how to bring it into the world.”

Resources & Links Mentioned in This Episode:

Listener Takeaways:

  1. Comparative titles don’t have to match your memoir exactly—they just need to share a lane.
  2. Agents actively share what they’re looking for on websites, wishlists, and social platforms.
  3. Querying requires patience, research, and strategy—but it’s a skill you can learn.
  4. Every memoir has a reader, and your story deserves to reach them.

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Thank you for listening to this episode of Making Memoir Magic. To learn more about my course, Make Memoir Magic, click here. 

Join my free Facebook Group, Memoir Magic for Aspiring Authors, where we honor your story, provide tips, create community, and help you write the story you were meant to tell. Join here!


SPEAKER_00

Welcome to Making Memoir Magic, the podcast where we unlock the power of your story and guide you through the magical process of turning life experiences into memoirs that inspire and impact. I'm your host, Carrie Chrysman, a memoir mentor and storytelling champion. And I'm here to help you find the courage to embrace your unique story and share it with the world. Whether you're just starting out or refining your final draft, this is the place to be for practical tips, inspiration, and the encouragement you need to write the memoir only you can tell. Ready to make some magic? Let's dive in. Hello friends, and welcome back to the Making Memoir Magic Podcast. Today we're talking about something that can make even the bravest memoir writer break out in a cold sweat. It's not writing memoir, it's not revising it, it's querying, sending that letter into the world and asking an agent to take a look. Okay, it can be scary, it's an abrupt change from what you are used to doing as in terms of writing your book. All of a sudden you have to flip a switch, so to speak, and write that pitch, get that hook, get the attention of the agent. So recently someone reached out to me with a question that I hear all the time from memoir writers. She said that two things to her were really challenging. First, she was struggling to find comparative titles for her memoir that were published within the last five years. And second, she said it felt almost impossible to figure out which agents even represent memoir in the first place. So if you've ever felt this way, let me tell you something right now. You are not alone. Querying memoir is a little different than querying fiction. It requires research, strategy, and a willingness to look at your story through a publishing lens. So today I want to give you a few practical ways to approach this process without losing heart along the way. Now, let's start with comparative titles, often called comp titles. When you query an agent, you're essentially answering a question for them. Where does this book fit into the marketplace? Now, we all know publishing is a business, and agents want to know that your story is going to have readers waiting for it. All right. So they're in the business to make money too. So a good comp title tells them three things. It tells them the audience for your book, the tone or theme of your story, the readers that are currently buying similar books. All right. But here is where memoir writers sometimes get stuck. You know your life story is unique. You know you have a story to tell. Okay. No one's denying that. So when someone says, find books like yours, it can feel impossible because nobody has lived the exact life that we've lived. Maybe there's similar experiences. Maybe you know we walk kind of the same path as someone, but it's not going to be exactly the same. No book is exactly the same, but when it when you're telling your personal stories and your lived experiences, sometimes it can feel impossible to find books that are compared or comparative titles to yours. So the thing is that they don't need to match your life exactly. Think about the titles as sharing a lane with you. Maybe you've had a similar life experience as someone else, or shared a similar emotional journey, or maybe you share a similar audience or a similar narrative style. You're not saying my story is identical. You're saying readers who loved this kind of story may also love mine. So let's now talk about where you can find these books because it can feel tricky sometimes. Here's a few places that I recommend that memoir writers start looking for comparative titles. Obviously, but maybe not so obviously, the memoir section at the bookstore. And if you can't find a section called memoir, it might be called biography or autobiography, even though you know as an author, your memoir is not an autobiography. All right. We've talked in other podcasts, and I've written about this how memoirs are different than autobiographies. But it depends on how that particular bookstore arranges their books. So, you know, if you don't find memoir, don't walk out and think that there's nothing in there that would fit the kind of book you're writing. Look for autobiography. Or ask someone at the bookstore. Maybe they have memoirs in a place that you might not expect. But do the same in the library, okay, and try to find ones published in the last five years because trends in publishing and what's popular and what's being well read right now are changing all the time. And when you find those comparative titles that you think might fit, notice the different themes in them: grief, family dynamics, identity, resilience, caregiving, cultural journeys, something else. Your story doesn't have to match perfectly. You're looking for adjacent stories. So also look on online book databases. Websites like Goodreads, Amazon, Bookshop.org allow you to explore memoir categories and see what readers are responding to right now. Look at phrases that say readers also enjoyed dot dot dot. Um lists of memoirs by theme, bestseller lists in memoir categories. This can lead you down wonderful rabbit holes of discovery. And look at literary prize lists. This is one that isn't often thought of or immediately obvious to querying authors. Some of the most powerful memoirs appear on award lists. You might look at prizes like the National Book Critics Award, the Penn Awards, major memoir prizes or nonfiction awards. These lists are treasure maps for serious memoir readers, and agents are paying attention to them too. The other thing you can do is look at podcasts and book reviews. Podcasts, book newsletters, and literary reviews often spotlight memoirs you might not see on a bestseller list. All right, that doesn't mean that they're any less significant as it comes to sharing them as far as comparative titles go. So keep that in mind as well. This can help you find fresh contemporary voices that align with your work. So now let's talk about the second challenge: finding agents who represent memoir. This part can feel like finding a needle in a haystack. Um, but there are several tools that can make this much easier. And so here are a few places to start. Um, try using Query Tracker. Query Tracker is one of the most widely used memoir tools or tools for writing and finding querying agents. You can filter the agents by genre, submission guidelines, response times. Also pay attention to what they're looking for right now. That changes. At certain times, certain ages will agents will be looking for specifically different types of books, even if they're in the overall nonfiction genre. So you can also find them on Instagram. Um, a lot of them will share regular posts about what they're looking for, what makes a good query, what hook stops an agent and makes them think twice and want to learn more about an author. So something to keep in mind. Um look at a manuscript wish list. This is a fantastic resource for querying memoir writers. Agents on there on that site will post the kinds of books that they are hoping to find. Sometimes they'll say things really specific like, I'm looking for narrative nonfiction or memoir about family relationships. And if that's what you write about, Google that agent. See if your uh ideas align, see if it's somebody you might want to work with, um, and then craft that query letter according to what he or she is specifying that they want to see in your request. They might say, I'd love to see memoirs about cultural identity. Then bam, that's your agent you want to target. When you see that alignment, that is your green light to query that agent. Also, look at literary agent websites. Many agency websites list exactly what their agents represent. I kind of said this before, but you have to do some research. Like chances are you've done some research in some ways already writing your book, whether you've researched family documents, you've gone back to your journals, or if your memoir includes some factual material, you've actually maybe interviewed other people, depending on what your story's about. This is a different kind of research. So expect that when you're planning to query, you are going to spend a considerable amount of time researching the agents that you want to approach to make sure they are a good fit, as well as the agency. Another suggestion is to pick up memoirs that you see in the bookstores and look in the first few pages and or in the acknowledgments and find out who did they work with. Chances are an author is going to thank their agent, their literary agency, their publisher, but you don't go to publishers yet. Okay, just backing up a little bit. You go to find the agent and the literary agency. But check the books themselves because they might be listed right in the author's comments. So it's something that a lot of people don't think about. So when researching agents, remember, look for phrases that have these words: narrative nonfiction, memoir, personal narrative, literary nonfiction. These are good indicators that your work might fit their interests. So the other thing I want to point out when querying and thinking about getting into this part of your publishing process is something important, all right? Querying takes patience. Sometimes it's a lot of patience, all right. It depends on how much time you as an author want to give and what your goals are as an author if you want agented representation. Um, agents receive hundreds of submissions every week, and rejections are part of the process. Um, and sometimes you may not even hear from an agent, and it's not personal, it's business, it's the amount of work they have coming into them. But if you get a rejection, you might think, wow, this is a bummer. I'm not happy about this, and I really wish this was my dream age, and I really wish they would have wanted more from me or wanted to have a meeting. But if you actually get a rejection, chances are that agent is going to share some feedback with you, even if it's one or two sentences. That's a gift. Consider that a gift. It could be a gift to enhance your writing in some way, improve your query. One small tweak that could make your memoir more attractive in the eyes of another agent. So keep that in mind as you are querying. Um, memoirs find their way into the world through different paths, and they're always going to be stories about ordinary people navigating extraordinary moments, and yours will find its home. Maybe it's a story about healing or a story about resilience or a messy, beautiful truth of being human. Um, that's what your memoir is going to do. So if the memo or querying process feels overwhelming, that is completely understandable. And that's one of the reasons that module three of my course, Make Memoir Magic, is all about publishing and querying, um, you know, writing a pitch and everything, because I want to share with writers what I learned. I will walk them through how to think about the publishing paths and find the one that is right for you because there is no one right publishing path, how querying works, what agents are looking for, and how to begin positioning your memoir in the marketplace. Writing the memoir is just one part of the journey, but understanding how the publishing world works is another piece entirely. So my goal with my course is to help writers move from I have a story to I have a story and I know how to bring it into the world. So if you're in the querying stage right now, take a deep breath. You've already done something brave. You've written the story. Now you're simply learning the next skill. And that is how do I introduce this story to the people who help bring books into the world. So besides what I have suggested already in this episode, the other thing you can do is keep reading memoir, keep studying the market, keep refining your pitch, and most importantly, keep believing that your story matters because the world has always been shaped by people who have the courage to say, this happened to me and it meant something. So I want to thank you for being here today, for listening, for giving me your time to learn more about memoir and how you can bring your unique story into the world. If this episode sparked something for you and you would like to explore how you can work with me or learn about my course make memoir magic, click the link in the show notes and learn more. But keep listening. I love having you here. I appreciate you listening. And if you've got a writer friend who's also in the writing or querying trenches, share this episode with them. I want this part of the publishing process to be easy for you. And why gatekeep information that can help others? So thank you again for read for being here. All right, and thank you for writing. And as always, I'm cheering you on. I believe in you and the power of your story. So keep writing and keep making memoir magic. Thank you for joining me on this episode of Making Memoir Magic. I hope today's conversation inspired you to take the next step toward telling your unique story through memoir. Remember, your story matters and someone out there is waiting to hear it. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. It helps others find the show. You can also connect with me at my website, CarrieCreisman.com, on social media, on Instagram at Make Memoir Magic, or join my Facebook group, Making Memoir Magic for Aspiring Writers. You'll get more tips and inspiration on your memoir journey. Until next time, keep writing, keep sharing, and keep making memoir magic.