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Is The Standard For Rejections Changing To "Simply Ignore?"
- Thread starter Mharvey
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Maybe this will put things in perspective. Holy S***! 200 queries a day. From the Friedrich Agency. Fair enough I'd say.
"Dear Author, Well, it's finally happened: after over thirty years of answering every query letter that has ever come my way, I've been forced to finally acknowledge that a new era is upon us all. Before the arrival of e-mail submissions, I used to receive perhaps one hundred queries a week. That was a lot of queries but it wasn't frankly unmanageable. The Friedrich Agency now receives more than twice that on a daily basis and it's becoming impossible to attend to much of anything else! I'm so sorry for the impersonal response, I hate to do this. Writing a good book or a good proposal is among the hardest things in the world to do; I promise, we're not unsympathetic! You have our word that we are reading every single query letter that comes our way, but from now on, we're only responding personally if we're sufficiently curious and would like to read further. Please don't take offense at this Draconian measure-- there is undoubtedly a wonderful agent out there for whom your book might just be the perfect match. Toward that end, we wish you all the best!"
"Dear Author, Well, it's finally happened: after over thirty years of answering every query letter that has ever come my way, I've been forced to finally acknowledge that a new era is upon us all. Before the arrival of e-mail submissions, I used to receive perhaps one hundred queries a week. That was a lot of queries but it wasn't frankly unmanageable. The Friedrich Agency now receives more than twice that on a daily basis and it's becoming impossible to attend to much of anything else! I'm so sorry for the impersonal response, I hate to do this. Writing a good book or a good proposal is among the hardest things in the world to do; I promise, we're not unsympathetic! You have our word that we are reading every single query letter that comes our way, but from now on, we're only responding personally if we're sufficiently curious and would like to read further. Please don't take offense at this Draconian measure-- there is undoubtedly a wonderful agent out there for whom your book might just be the perfect match. Toward that end, we wish you all the best!"
I'm not buying
I'm amazed at all the talk about how busy agents are. I've run two professional organizations, one of 650 the other of 250. My boss ran the entire thing and had over 7500 people. Emails were replied to, it was required and woe to any supervisor who didn't, both upband down the chain. I think it's rude and unprofessional that a query isn't replied to. I'm sure some will attempt the "you don't know" argument but I used to AVERAGE over 150 emails a DAY. I do know.
I'm amazed at all the talk about how busy agents are. I've run two professional organizations, one of 650 the other of 250. My boss ran the entire thing and had over 7500 people. Emails were replied to, it was required and woe to any supervisor who didn't, both upband down the chain. I think it's rude and unprofessional that a query isn't replied to. I'm sure some will attempt the "you don't know" argument but I used to AVERAGE over 150 emails a DAY. I do know.
Eagle, it's easy enough to respond to 150 emails a day: but to do so on top of an agent's primary duties, which is to represent her existing clients, is a huge task. Working with a good list of clients is already a more-than-full-time job: when you add responding to hundreds of queries a week, you're looking at twelve hour days right through the week, and working on weekends too.
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Even with a full staff of assistants and interns, agents can be reading fulls or responding to queries during "off" time.
Then the agent needs to close to queries. "No response = no" is rude and unprofessional.
If an agent can't find an hour a week to respond to queries, then that agent clearly has a full list and isn't really looking for new clients anyway. Show some respect to writers and admit that by closing to queries for a while. Everyone will be happier -- the agent won't be flooded with e-mail and writers won't be left hanging.