Why do agents fail to e-mail rejections?

kellion92 · Jul 30, 2011

scarletpeaches said:
Those writers aren't worth their time. Why should they mollycoddle people who aren't even clients?

Exactly. We agree, although I don't see how a decline is "mollycoddling" someone. Still, it does keep the door open. Agents may think a writer's current book isn't marketable, but their next one may very well be huge, and a simple, courteous form reply is more likely to get another query.

mccardey · Jul 30, 2011

In Australia (as far as I know) you get a response. Smaller market and all that, but still - it must be terrifically frustrating not to hear anything!

(Also, in Australia as far as I know, we don't have rules about query letters. You just kind of write a letter and send in a bit of the book and see who bites. I know - it is paradise...)

stray · Jul 30, 2011

AP7 said:
I dont have a problem with the agents who didnt reply to my initial query, but the ones that requested manuscripts, and then never gave an answer, even after polite follow ups spaced out three months at a time...those people are pretty crummy in my book.

This is my feeling too. If they went to the bother of reading a full M.S. Why not comment about it? Good or bad.

AP7 · Jul 30, 2011

scarletpeaches said:
Those writers aren't worth their time. Why should they mollycoddle people who aren't even clients?

Your time isn't any more precious than that of the agent or publisher you're contacting.

Yes, but is their time more precious than mine? Any successful business relationship requires mutual respect. Again, agents arent reading slush as a public service. They arent obligated to do anything but it should behoove them to act a certain way. You dont run your business based on the occasional crackpot or obnoxious writer. And those writers are aspiring professionals, whereas the agent is a working professional. Personally, I think the working professional should be held to a higher standard.

scarletpeaches · Jul 30, 2011

AP7 said:
Yes, but is their time more precious than mine?

They receive far more queries than you send out. We're not talking one or two. We're talking hundreds. Every. Damn. Day.

AP7 said:
Any successful business relationship requires mutual respect. Again, agents arent reading slush as a public service. They arent obligated to do anything but it should behoove them to act a certain way. You dont run your business based on the occasional crackpot or obnoxious writer.

You do when you don't know which individual will turn out to be the crackpot.

AP7 said:
And those writers are aspiring professionals, whereas the agent is a working professional. Personally, I think the working professional should be held to a higher standard.

No, the writer is a professional, or should be. Aspiring nothing. As I've said before, if you want it to be your job, act as if it already is.

AP7 · Jul 30, 2011

Peaches, I said above I dont have a problem with not responding to every query. But requesting manuscripts then never replying? Sure, on occasion correspondence gets lost. But check the backgrounds threads, this goes on too often. As do a host of other behaviors that in most other fields wouldn’t be acceptable. But because people want to be published so badly, they accept it, and excuse it.

And sure the writer should be a professional. But because some aren’t, it’s okay to treat all poorly?

scarletpeaches · Jul 30, 2011

Oh, I see. Requested manuscripts. Well, in that place I'd be titted off.

AP7 · Jul 30, 2011

scarletpeaches said:
Oh, I see. Requested manuscripts. Well, in that place I'd be titted off.

Thank you. Me too. I should say, the vast majority of agents I've dealt with over the years have been fine. But still, a few haven't and it's frustrating.

sharonsharon · Jul 30, 2011

In some respects it is a power play. I have a brother who owned a big sports agency. I went in there one day and nobody knew I was his sister. One guy had this attitude and told me to not go to the back offices. He figured out i was the boss's sister and then his whole attitude changed. It showed me that side of human nature that disgusts me. One minute I was dirt, then the next i get the red carpet treatment?

They are in the place of power in their minds in these agencies. If they needed you they would bend over backwards, but feel it is o.k to treat people like dirt if they do not. For an agent not respond after the manuscript was requested is disgusting. Truthfully, I also feel they should respond even with a form rejection to queries, unless they state if you do not hear then we are not interested on their site.

That is my take on it, and I can understand how others might feel the agency gets too many queries to respond.

ScribeLady · Aug 1, 2011

I, personally, don't care if agents don't respond to queries they choose to reject,although it's nice when they do. However, I get really pissed when they don't respond to fulls they request. How unprofessional! I recently sent a follow-up to an agent who's had a full for four months; still, no response. Really disgusting! I'm pissed and outraged over it. No wonder she hasn't sold much of anything in the past two years! She's simply a loser! I'm developing a growing contempt for this so-called "profession."

Scribelady

Tifferbugz · Aug 1, 2011

ScribeLady said:
I, personally, don't care if agents don't respond to queries they choose to reject,although it's nice when they do. However, I get really pissed when they don't respond to fulls they request. How unprofessional! I recently sent a follow-up to an agent who's had a full for four months; still, no response. Really disgusting! I'm pissed and outraged over it. No wonder she hasn't sold much of anything in the past two years! She's simply a loser! I'm developing a growing contempt for this so-called "profession."

Scribelady

From what I understand, four months isn't insanely long to wait for a full with an agent. Patience isn't a virtue if you want to be writer; it's a necessity. The fact that you're calling her a loser on a public forum isn't going to make you any friends in the publishing world. It's a small world, and websites are not as anonymous as you may think. Throwing a temper tantrum on this one will not help you with your career and makes you look like a child, not a professional.

Just something you might want to think about.

bearilou · Aug 2, 2011

I, personally, don't care if agents don't respond to queries they choose to reject,although it's nice when they do. However, I get really pissed when they don't respond to fulls they request. How unprofessional! I recently sent a follow-up to an agent who's had a full for four months; still, no response. Really disgusting! I'm pissed and outraged over it. No wonder she hasn't sold much of anything in the past two years! She's simply a loser! I'm developing a growing contempt for this so-called "profession."

It's easy and understandable to be frustrated and pissed that you haven't heard but as Tifferbugz said, you should be careful when on this forum for sure because editors and agents do read here. You wouldn't want this wording to come back on you.

That said, making assumptions as to why the agent hasn't responded is a dicey propostion. You don't know what the circumstances are. She may be swamped. She may have sent it but it got caught in your junk mail folder. Maybe your email to her got caught in the junk mail folder. She may be ill or dealing with an illness in her family. She may be still considering your ms. There may be extenuating circumstances or reasons beyond the transparent ones.

Sure, it's disappointing to not hear back from an agent. But not all reasons are nefarious 'she's out to get you and deliberately be rude to you'.

Phaeal · Aug 2, 2011

bearilou said:
That's the confusing part for me. As stated above, an automated reply that it was received will at least keep the re-queries down.

*wanders in tight little circles*

I agree. Many agents I queried had such an auto-response, which often included a sentence like, "If you don't hear from us in six weeks, please assume we are not the right agency for your work."

I appreciated knowing my sub had gotten through, and those agents avoided the danger that I'd send them another query a few months down the line, just in case the first got lost.

ScribeLady · Aug 2, 2011

I did, indeed, go overboard in my criticism of an agent. Certainly, I'm sophisticated enough to know that agents are often overwhelmed with manuscripts to read. And I wouldn't be surprised if they've made staff cutbacks in this rocky economy.

Scribelady

lauralam · Aug 2, 2011

Angry Robot had autoresponses for their open door month, and it took some of the anxiety out of it. The few agents I've queried do respond, but an autoresponse would have been welcome. But hey, c'est la vie. Yes, it'd be nice to get a response from everyone because we as humans like closure, but the system probably won't change. Shrug and move on.

stray · Aug 2, 2011

Normally I've found that if an agent is interested they respond with 48 hours to a query being sent. Agents are hunters by nature and they will snap up something quickly if it looks tasty. Then the partial. If there's no repsonse after a query or a partial its a given that its not the book for them. Then the full manuscript. And then nothing. I've only been submitting for a a couple of years but that's the trend I've found. An agent says they love your work, asks you to send the full M.S, by post and email and then nothing after six months. The problem for a writer is that once you submit that full M.S it effects how you market the book. You may market it less thinking that you should give the interested party time to consider it. You lose six months and another book similar to yours is published, and the momentum is lost...

It is frustrating.

Lady MacBeth · Aug 2, 2011

I understand that agents get bogged down by electronic queries and although I don't like it, I accept that sometimes it is easier not to respond. If that's the case, I'd at least like them to state as much in their submission policy. However, I get very annoyed when I send an SASE and it is ignored. Or worse, I get a request for a full manuscript and never receive a response. This seems to be happening more often.

ScribeLady · Aug 2, 2011

What surprises me about the policy of some agents not responding to fulls and partials is that it would be so simple to subscribe to a response system.

Scribelady.

AP7 · Aug 2, 2011

stray said:
Normally I've found that if an agent is interested they respond with 48 hours

I agree. Sure, we all hear the occasional exceptions, but generally, if an agent is interested, they are quick and responsive. If they arent showing enthusiasm, the writer should move on.

AP7 · Aug 2, 2011

ScribeLady said:
What surprises me about the policy of some agents not responding to fulls and partials is that it would be so simple to subscribe to a response system.

Scribelady.

It's not only bad business, it's a rotten way to treat people. Even better is when they call and show all kinds of enthusiasm, and then drop off the planet with no explanation. But this is the way some agents behave on a regular basis. These are just a few of the reasons I've come to believe a writer has a better shot self publishing than trying to rise through slush.

Phaeal · Aug 2, 2011

stray said:
The problem for a writer is that once you submit that full M.S it effects how you market the book. You may market it less thinking that you should give the interested party time to consider it. You lose six months and another book similar to yours is published, and the momentum is lost...

It is frustrating.

Unless I had granted an exclusive read (and I limited those to three weeks or less), I never let up on querying.

I think that agents who really want to cut down on their queries should accept only snail mail. This won't stop the determined querier, but it will discourage many casual ones. Especially those younglings who've never seen a stamp before.

scope · Aug 2, 2011

Assuming a rejection of a requested partial or full, I don't understand why agents (except those who tell us in advance that no reply within "X" # of weeks should be taken as a no) don't advise writers of same (even a form is okay). After all, in most cases, they requested these partials and fulls after reading query letters, and perhaps sysopsis' or proposals.

And one of the reason I don't understand is that we are not talking about a bunch of rejected partials and/or fulls. How many partials and/or fulls would you guess the "average" agent requests weekly -- 5, if that?

Kristoff · Aug 3, 2011

bearilou said:
So, if an agent has a no response is no policy, how would you know if no response is a no or if they never received it because it got lost?

You don't. Which sucks. Want my advice? Send it again. From a different ISP and different email address or via a different channel (ie, snail mail). Don't resend it over and over again. Crazy people do this. Just resend it once. That way you can be reasonably sure it got there, and your radio silence is a rejection.

My agent is a "no response means no" guy. I queried him initially via email and got no response. A couple of months later, I queried him via snail mail and went from partial to full to offer of rep in about 5 days.

No response doesn't always mean no.

Why do agents fail to e-mail rejections?

kellion92

A cat may not look at a king

mccardey

stray

AP7

scarletpeaches

AP7

scarletpeaches

AP7

sharonsharon

ScribeLady

Tifferbugz

Doing Pirate things...

bearilou

DenturePunk writer

Phaeal

Whatever I did, I didn't do it.

ScribeLady

lauralam

Moonshade

stray

Lady MacBeth

Out, damn'd spot! out, I say.

ScribeLady

AP7

AP7

Phaeal

Whatever I did, I didn't do it.

scope

Commonsensical Maverick

Kristoff