Anyone with a book idea can pitch to scholarly press editors and get a fair hearing. But you have to make it easy for them to say yes.

They’ll tell you that you can put yourself ahead of the pack simply by researching which agents will be most interested in your story and writing a killer query letter about yourself and your book.

Sending a boilerplate query letter to every agent in the book is a waste of time that will not get you anywhere. You have to stand out. Ideally, agents should be queried in small groups once a month.