I feel like agents sometimes place the blame on themselves to, you know, be courteous and spare us querying writers our feelings.....And they may think, welp, we're gonna let writers down easy with the literary version of "It's not you, it's me".
I think that this is probably the truth in the end.
Even if, say, the book is a romance and the editor doesn't take romance or read romance?
No, absolutely not, and I should have mentioned this. I wouldn't expect an agent to step so far out of their range. I don't expect someone who specializes in horror to pitch romance.
My agent isn't a saleswoman; she's an agent. She doesn't rep sci-fi and she would do a disservice to an author if she took on his sci-fi to sell, for several reasons:
And I wouldn't expect someone who specializes in romance to pitch sci-fi.
I'm not sure why you think this is a weakness.
I don't--unless it gets used on a form letter. And then it might conceivably sound like a weakness. If something appears on a form letter, then it gets sent out to hundreds or thousands of people a year. So this agent is telling thousands of people a year that she can't market their book. I wouldn't call that bragging.
You are still taking it way too literally and reading way too much into it.
Just askin', bro. Just askin'.