Responding to rejections?

Your impression is correct.

I absolutely agree with Deadly. Deadly is dead on.

On queries? I wouldn't bother. They probably won't answer and it could land you on their 'blocked email' lists hurting your future chances.

On partials and fulls, though? There's nothing wrong with sending a quick email thanking them for taking the time to read your stuff. It's when you ask them for more reasons why they rejected you, or "if I fix this will you represent me?" type things that bug the crap out of them.

If you do decide to respond to a rejection, however, always do yourself a favor and sleep on it overnight....never respond during the heat of initial reaction.

Typically, definitely not- for all the reasons stated above. It's only irritating to the agent to have another email to dispose of.

There have been a couple of cases where I've received really helpful feedback on my query at the bottom of the rejection. I've acknowledged that in a very clear "just passing on why this was helpful- not looking for acknowledgment or re-evaluation" sort of a way, because it's the type of feedback that is gold to someone struggling with the query process.

Only on query feedback, though- not on feedback about my book. The rejection is feedback on my book and any notes are just appreciated gravy. Help on the query goes above and beyond, though, so I've said thanks.

Thank you. I was just going to ask this question.

My response to rejections is to throw them away. I advise you to follow this practice.

rejections..to the recycle bin..

arkady said:

My response to rejections is to throw them away. I advise you to follow this practice.

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Don't forget to keep track of the rejects though as you could accidently requery an agent (I am guilty) or query another agent in the same office I have done that all by mistake (laugh). So far I am not dead yet but learning the hardway that before I toss the rejects I need to keep track along the way even when it hurts a little.

RE: Response To Rejections

Whenever an agent has rejected my work, but written a personal rejection ie. with my name on the rejection letter, I do send them a thank you email for taking the time to consider my manuscript.

I never send thank yous to those agents who respond to my query with a form rejection letter.

I don't believe that I am pestering them as I am not asking for any extra information, just thanking them for their time.

It makes me feel good, and I hope the agents also.

Whenever I received feedback from a publisher or agent I would always send a polite "thank you".

Re: fixing what was said in a rejection letter and resubmitting:

Don't assume that the brief comments in a rejection letter can possibly contain every item that caused the piece to be rejected. Even a short story might have 5 or 10 major faults -- if an editor uses one or two as an example, and you fix those two, there may still be other things the editor didn't like.

Plus, seeing a manuscript a second time is tricky -- unless you get a different reader, they'll probably just think "This thing again?" It's hard to make it fresh the first time, much less the second time around. Just send the work somewhere else. Different editors and readers will comment on different things, and it's up to you to figure out which changes (if any) to make.

I don't and won't.

I don't respond to query rejections unless I'm feeling particularly unintelligent that day (and I have, in the past. Oh well, not dead yet). However, I do respond to "big" rejections, such as ones where they offer a lot of feedback and/or invite me to resubmit.

Buster said:

Whenever an agent has rejected my work, but written a personal rejection ie. with my name on the rejection letter...

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Just fyi, it's very easy to plug a name into a form letter.

WolfgangNibori said:

I'm new to AW so if I missed this posted elsewhere, please forgive. What I'm wondering is, when I send out a query and I get a reply that says basically "no thanks" do I reply? I've gotten both posted and e-mail rejections. I was under the impression that replying to a rejection simply wastes an agent's time and may make you look like a nag.

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My advice: never respond to rejections unless an agent has sent you a warm, personalized rejection on a requested partial or full, in which case a brief "Thank you so much for your time" is a nice touch.

I'm not tempted to respond to a rejection at all. My initial thought isn't
"thank you for your time" it's more like "thank you for wasting my time." Blah.