When to give up.

Neverrrrr!

Serious answer: When you don't feel it's worth the effort anymore.

For the first MS I seriously queried (MS3 for me), I put it on the back burner after nothing but no response/form rejections after 10 queries. Now I think that is very soon, but in this case it was a book I had started writing in high school and had been working on off and on for something like 8 years. So I just really wanted to focus on writing something new. I still think it is a decent novel and would like to maybe work on it again someday, but I was burnt out on it.

I don't have a set number in mind this time around, but I'd say if I got to the triple digits I'd probably stop wasting my time with it. It really just depends on you and how you feel and the feedback you get. I think there is a big difference between 100 form rejections and 50 form rejections/50 "just not for me" rejections.

If you don't get any requests for fulls or partials from 50 or so submissions, then you know your query has problems. At that point, rewrite your query and send it out to a new batch of agents.

If you do get requests for fulls or partials but don't get any offers after that, then there is probably a problem with your manuscript, or you've sent it to the wrong agents. Double-check that the people you're submitting to represent writers in the appropriate genre, and then consider taking another look at the book.

If you reach the point where you've had a load of partial and full requests but have not had an offer of representation then chances are you will have got some sort of feedback on the book. If everyone who has commented has said similar things then you know there's probably a problem which should be easy-ish to identify; if you've had a wide range of comments back then you know there's probably a problem but you are going to have to do some work to identify it.

I'd give up submitting if I got a lot of similar comments. I'd consider reworking the book to accommodate those comments, but I might change the way I was presenting the book instead.

Never give up if you believe in your story. Every flaw is fixable, even if it means severely rewriting. It took me 142 queries to get my first agent. My request rate was about 15% on my query. When that agent failed to sell it, it took a few more queries to get agent #2, and now with her guidance I'm rewriting said book by about 70%. It's becoming such a better book in the process.

I think the time to give up is when you stop believing in it or have gone as far as you can with it even after getting feedback, or when you've outgrown it as a writer and can't bring it with you.

I stopped querying MS #1 after about 125 queries and writing two R&Rs for one agent (which didn't work out). At that point, I realized I was way too close to the book to know what was wrong with it and the feedback was more frustrating than helpful. (But never give up entirely on a book. Two years after I've stopped querying, I now know what's wrong with it and am contemplating how to fix it.)

I stopped querying MS #2 after about the same number of rejections and a very helpful/honest rejection on a full that made me rewrite the MS. Again, I haven't given up on it. The revised version is waiting on my hard-drive while I query MS #3.

So, I would say that there is a time to stop querying, but never a time to completely give up on a MS. Make sure your query is strong. Make sure your MS is strong. Walk away when it's too frustrating or you're too close. Write something else. Often in the writing of something else, you'll discover what you need to make that last one better.

verlin, there's maybe 2 answers to your question, or 2 sub-questions....

I would get nervous about my query faster than old hack, like if I hadn't heard anything within 20 submissions, maybe less. (I'd also run it through QLH here, first--have you done that???) And if so, I'd look at the query--is it going to the right people? Is it actually good? Then, if you are getting partials, I would worry about the manuscript.

The other question though is how you want to define giving up. If you got ten partial requests, all rejections, I'd be considering making a change to something.....but whether that means a re-write, writing something new and trying to sell Book 2, or quitting altogether is up to the individual writer.

If you want to give up, go ahead.

That doesn't necessarily mean giving up altogether. Just this one. Trunk it and work on the next book.

You can sometimes, with a lot of work, transform an unpublishable book into a publishable one.

But if you keep on plugging on at just one book you're not going to learn as much about writing as you would if you wrote more books.

If you've been told by several publishing professionals that your book isn't publishable as it is, and they've all agreed on why that is, then you could rework it: but you'd probably gain more by writing more books.

Verlin, don't forget to take timing into consideration. Maybe you will have more luck with this manuscript in a year or two when the market shifts? Perhaps trunk this one for the time being and work on your next story, with the view to trying again with #1 in the future?

Verlin said:

Verlin here. Thanks for all the help.
I guess a subtext here is: is it healthy or sensible to hang onto your idea of your ms' wonderfulness if the consensus feedback from professionals seems to indicate that it may be crap (least in terms of the marketplace)? Aren't some projects unsalvageable? And isn't a distinct lack of enthusiasm from a large sample of agents a good indicator of this? Believing in something when there is a lot of evidence to the contrary is simply fighting reality, isn't it? My sense is that reality is bigger than us and usually wins.

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well, unless I missed something, you aren't getting bites. That in itself is a very small factoid you're trying to draw global conclusions from....a bit like saying if something is round, doesn't that prove it is an apple.....

sure, if its an apple. but you could be getting no responses because the query is bad. or the first five/10/50 pages are bad. or the book needs some changes.

or because its ALL shit.

But I wouldn't conclude the latter, as you seem to be, from the evidence you presented thus far.

So far you can conclude you aren't getting agents; you are only speculating, and pretty narrowly, as to why that is.

Verlin said:

Verlin here. Thanks for all the help.
I guess a subtext here is: is it healthy or sensible to hang onto your idea of your ms' wonderfulness if the consensus feedback from professionals seems to indicate that it may be crap (least in terms of the marketplace)? Aren't some projects unsalvageable? And isn't a distinct lack of enthusiasm from a large sample of agents a good indicator of this? Believing in something when there is a lot of evidence to the contrary is simply fighting reality, isn't it? My sense is that reality is bigger than us and usually wins.

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The thing is, your opinion of your work and the real reception of your work are not two immovable, unchangeable things. They will change with time, with revision, with the reader, with the market.

If you want to hang on to a book, you may have to let go of your sense of its wonderfulness (and I've been there! When I'm in the home stretch of a new book, I always think it's unbelievably amazing; it's a natural high). But you don't have to conclude it's unsalvageable crap. There are so many other possibilities between those poles.

I think it's healthy to hang on to an oft-rejected book if you are getting feedback, learning about the market, and revising that book to meet the market in the middle. I drafted a book in 2005 and didn't get representation for it until 2011, after numerous major ms. and query overhauls. After it didn't sell, I overhauled it again based on editor feedback. I still have hopes for it.

While I obsessed about that book, I wrote more books. I got better at storytelling. I learned humbling lessons about why my writing wasn't working for readers, and applied them.

By contrast: The first book I ever sent to an agent was a 160K-word rambling literary speculative something-or-other. It meant a lot to me, but I know now it didn't work as a story — not even close. I gave up on that one, and I don't regret it.

I could be wrong, but I would guess that most working fiction writers do a lot of overproduction, i.e., produce many, many words that will never see the light of day for various reasons. (The agent doesn't like them, the editor doesn't like them, the author him- or herself has second thoughts about them.) It's the willingness to rethink and cut the crap without abandoning the ship that leads to success — well, that plus talent.

And form rejection letters don't suffice to tell you whether you have "talent." I've known writers who had stellar talent for crafting metaphors and zero talent for crafting a story; they don't do well in the query game, but might fare just fine in a college writing workshop. That's not to say that everybody has writing talent (far from it!), just that many factors go into these judgments.

Verlin said:

So when do other writers let go of their hopes...

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Who cares? As long as you give up quickly it leaves more shelf space for me.

Or did you want a pep talk...?

Jeff

Verlin said:

I think I needed to stay mildly delusional to finish the novel and do all the query drudgery.

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Just a thought: you did finish the novel before you queried it, didn't you? Because if not, that could also account for some of the rejections you received.

so, a couple thoughts:

1. in bypassing qlh out of whatever fears, you may have greatly diminished your request rate. Water under the bridge now, but if there IS a next time, you most likely only hurt yourself there...nobody steals work from QLH and the success rate is much higher for folks who stay there awhile and learn than for the folks just coming in, which certainly suggests it helps.

2. the "thought-out rejection letters": Did they have any common complaints or threads to focus on?

I haven't been writing professionally for very long but it seems today's book market is way different than 20 years ago and i suspect we will see even greater growth on the self-publishing side over the next decade (that's my computer science side talking). So my new direction is to just self-publish everything.

meangene01 said:

I haven't been writing professionally for very long but it seems today's book market is way different than 20 years ago and i suspect we will see even greater growth on the self-publishing side over the next decade (that's my computer science side talking). So my new direction is to just self-publish everything.

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I can't say that approach won't work for the very, very few, but book publishing really hasn't changed much, and there's more money now in traditional, commercial publishing that ever before.

Unless you're a writer whop already has a widely recognized name, growth doesn't make self-publishing better, it makes it worse. All growth does is add a higher mountain of really horrible manuscripts that makes finding the extremely rare good self-published novel even more difficult.

OP, how many novel length manuscripts have you finished? Writing style grows and changes as it gets more progress. You might want to come back to this ms after you have a few more under your belt and rework it. Or it's possible that your ms rocks, and the reason it's not getting the result you hoped for has little to do with the quality of the ms. There's no way to know.

As for your original question, I have a long range plan that does not involve giving up. I know that sounds snarky, but it's true. I did my research. When I started, I knew how ginormous agent slush piles were. I knew I could query my first ms, but that I also had to work on platform and publishing credits. My first ms had 100+ queries, partial and full requests, (especially after Query Letter Hell thread help) but no takers and no specific feedback. While doing that, I wrote ms 2. I queried that one less, because I did get discouraged. Maybe 25+ queries, with some full and partial requests, but once again no takers and no specific feedback. During this time, I got a novella and a short story published. Now I'm trying to find a small publisher for ms #3, and writing ms #4. My plan is to try to get a buyer for ms #3, then use that to add to my writing credits when I query book #4.

That was my plan from the get go, except that I stopped querying book #2 sooner than I should have. I gave myself a two year deadline before I thought about self publishing. That doesn't mean I will decide to self publish at the 2 year mark, it just means that I'm not considering it at all until then.

It's hard for a debut writer to get that first book published, or land that agent, even with an awesome query letter and a fantabulous book. There's a ton of queries in those slush piles. The only way you can manage it is to never give up.

OP,

I wouldn't give up, not just yet, but here's what I'd do in your situation. If you're continuously getting rejected AND if the publishers/agents are giving you feedback (instead of a polite "No thanks") then use that feedback to make the necessary changes. Get some beta readers to find the flaws. Check your syntax, grammar, style...the whole nine yards. After doing all that AND working on your query technique AND submitting, if it's still not getting through, either self-publish or trunk it. Your decision.

But I would not give up. I started writing at the relatively late age of forty-eight. (I'm fifty-two now) Within a year I got published digitally and that was after being rejected around sixty times. To be honest, my first novel didn't set the literary world on fire. It needed a LOT more work...but it started me on my journey. It gave me hope. And it provided me with the inspiration to keep going no matter what.

Since then I've been published a few more times, have two papperbok's out (Twisted and Lindsay Versus the Marauders)
and will get published again. I'm still working on various techniques to improve my style and will continue to do so. And yes, I've also gotten rejected for some other works...but I've never given up and never will. You shouldn't, either.

Just my two yen for the day...

I would forget about the editor and find free critique partners or beta readers. Ask them to focus specifically on the protagonist and how he could be improved. If you know that's the problem, and you have a solid plot, there's a good chance you can fix it. Are the protagonist's motivations too opaque? Does he have a tone that rubs people the wrong way? Does he seem like a generic placeholder? Readers can narrow it down for you.

Finding more agents is a problem. There are some threads in Ask the Agent about people who requeried with a dramatically revised book; it is an option. Or if you get late full requests trickling in, you could give them the revised ms.

That's assuming you still like this book, and feel its plot is strong enough to justify doing work on your protagonist. The consistency of responses suggests that may be the right direction.

That said, I just read a Big Five-published novel whose protagonist I hated. Goodreads reviews tell me I'm not alone. The book had other aspects strong enough to overcome a weak protagonist, at least in most readers' eyes. And "I hate this protagonist" is a very subjective judgment, which is why you need to find the consistent factors behind it.

When I signed with my agent, I told her about the various conflicting judgments of my novel I'd received from prior readers. She didn't care. If a reputable agent is committed enough to sign you, they already have their own vision of what makes the book salable and what needs to be revised.

Jamesaritchie said:

Unless you're a writer whop already

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God knows I've tried to become a writer whop, but I . . . just . . . can't . . . seeeeem . . . to get there.

caw

blacbird said:

God knows I've tried to become a writer whop, but I . . . just . . . can't . . . seeeeem . . . to get there.

caw

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You can learn to do whop.