QueryGardens is an art- and artist-first submission platform for writers. Start with your manuscripts. Find where they belong. And stay centered throughout the process.
You're not just a writer or artist. The submission process also asks you to be a researcher, strategist, administrator, and your own emotional support system — all at once.
That's a lot to carry. Especially if you're trying to do it by yourself.
Agent preferences, magazine guidelines, contest deadlines — information about each scattered across the internet. You spend hours gathering data — where do you put it?
Query letters, author bios, formatted manuscripts, agent or publisher personalization, submission logs, follow-ups — for every single submission. Then you choose a new manuscript and do it all again.
One specializes in agents. Another — magazines and publishers. Yet another for contests and fellowships. One does novels, not picture-books. Another does children's lit agents but not adult fiction agents. And spreadsheets for everything else that doesn't quite fit.
Weeks or months of silence. Form rejections with no feedback. Champagne rejections and close calls. The administrative burden of submitting crowding out actual writing time.
What if the submission process didn't have to feel like trench warfare?
What if it could feel like tending a garden?
That's what we're building.
Other submission tools start with a database of publishers. QueryGardens starts with your manuscripts — because your work is the heart of the process.
Add your manuscripts and see them as cards in your personal "query garden." Poems, novels, picture books, essays, memoirs, graphic novels — each one gets its own space, its own identity, its own history.
As you research agents, literary magazines, contests, publishers, fellowships, and other submission venues, save what you find in rich Opportunity Cards — structured profiles where your notes, links, submission requirements, and fit assessments all live together. Your database grows with you, shaped by your own interests and research.
For each manuscript, explore the opportunities you've gathered and match the ones that feel right. Each Opportunity Card holds everything you need to make an informed decision — so you're choosing from a place of clarity, not guesswork.
Drag your matched opportunities into tiers: Ideal, Great, Good, Acceptable, Consider Later. Think about tone, aesthetic, editorial sensibility — not just keyword matches. Build a strategic picture of where your work would be most at home.
Plan submissions in strategic rounds. Then log each in QueryGardens to track what you've sent where, with duplicate-submission prevention across all your manuscripts — so you can focus on the writing, not the bookkeeping.
Every design decision begins with one question: does this serve the person who created the manuscript?
Your manuscript dashboard shows your work first. View and sort your manuscripts, then consider where they might thrive.
Agents, magazines, contests, publishers, fellowships — all in structured opportunity cards with research links, submission requirements, fit rankings, and your private notes. With data freshness indicators so you know what's current.
Go beyond keyword or genre filtering. Rank opportunity venues by tone, aesthetic, thematic alignment, or even editorial sensibility. See where your work truly belongs — not just where it technically qualifies.
The system tracks every logged submission across all your manuscripts, so you'll always know what you've sent where. No more accidentally sending the same piece to the same venue twice.
Submit on an external platform like Submittable or QueryTracker, then confirm in QueryGardens in under five seconds. Keep a record of all your submissions in one place. Tracking that doesn't feel like a second job.
Optional Encouragement Mode. Post-submission reflection prompts. Milestones that celebrate persistence, not just outcomes. A program voice that treats the process with the care it deserves.
Before we approve any line of copy, we ask: "Would this make a discouraged writer feel more grounded?"
QueryGardens serves writers across genres who are actively seeking publication — and deserve tools designed for their journey.
QueryGardens is currently in development. Join the waitlist to be among the first to experience it — and to help shape what it becomes.
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