The Daily Rejection, Vol. 2

NotForUsThanks · Oct 9, 2017

Welcome back Noranne, and that's the spirit Timeforce! Best of luck.

Standard rejection on a full. Agent thanked me for thinking of her. I didn't. She liked my elevator pitch in a twitter competition.

Two fulls still out there, but it feels like the chances for this ms, despite much early enthusiasm, has died out.

Collie · Oct 9, 2017

Sorry, NotForUs. It just sucks, there's no way around it

sockycat · Oct 9, 2017

Timeforce said:
Finished an initial edit for my first draft of my book. Now it's time it's get rejected! I can't wait.

Hahaha that's the spirit!

Sorry for the R, NotForUs. It only takes one!! I have my fingers crossed for you.

EMaree · Oct 9, 2017

*sneaks in*

...Something very very good might be happening, and while I can only be vague right now, I hope to be significantly less vague soon!

Also, I hope you are all having a great week and wish you tons of luck in your inboxes. <3 NotForUsThanks, don't lose hope! You're doing great, just keep at it.

*sneaks out again*

peartree · Oct 9, 2017

I got this on Friday:

Dear [peartree],

Thank you for sending your query and first pages. Unfortunately, I'm afraid I wasn't captivated enough to ask to see more material. But it's a subjective business and I hope another agent will be interested.

Thank you again for sending your query and I wish you the best of luck in your publishing endeavors.

Best wishes,

[Agent]

I've been feeling bummed all weekend, and I'm still bummed today, even though I got some good writing done yesterday. I'm not sending this novel out anymore. I'll just finish the trilogy, edit again, and self-publish. Time to accept defeat, I think.

CameronJohnston · Oct 9, 2017

EMaree said:
*sneaks in*

...Something very very good might be happening, and while I can only be vague right now, I hope to be significantly less vague soon!

Also, I hope you are all having a great week and wish you tons of luck in your inboxes. <3 NotForUsThanks, don't lose hope! You're doing great, just keep at it.

*sneaks out again*

Ahhhhhhh so excited! It really sucks not being able to tell people things yet.

Hope things turn around for you NotForUsThanks. You only need one to love the manuscript. *fingers crossed*

How many agents is that now Peartree? It is such a dispiriting and disappoonting business *sigh*

Collie · Oct 9, 2017

Peartree - I'm sorry. It's a miserable business for sure.

lianna williamson · Oct 9, 2017

Ooh, I can't wait until you can share, EMaree!

peartree · Oct 9, 2017

CameronJohnston said:
Ahhhhhhh so excited! It really sucks not being able to tell people things yet.

Hope things turn around for you NotForUsThanks. You only need one to love the manuscript. *fingers crossed*

How many agents is that now Peartree? It is such a dispiriting and disappoonting business *sigh*

It was agent 103. I'm just over it. I really thought this book was GOOD. My mom said she enjoyed it, and she tells me straight-up when I do something not up to her standard. Hell, I re-wrote my entire second book of the trilogy because she told me it was a mess and didn't capture the vibe of the original one.

Collie - thank you too. The rejection sucks. If I had gotten some feedback that would've been something, but basically every last one said, "Just not my style".

NotForUsThanks · Oct 10, 2017

Thanks everyone for the kind words after my latest rejection on a full, this business is hard.

Peartree - I'm hearing this sort of story from all quarters right now, good books that should be picked up but aren't. Last agent rejection I got to a cold query said the industry is really tough right now and she's only taking on stuff that she is sure she can sell. I think the only way writers can deal with this is to know that the business will pick up again, and when it does we'll have more experience under our belts. Every book we write makes us a better writer.

EMaree - really looking forward to hearing your news!

peartree · Oct 10, 2017

NotForUsThanks said:
Thanks everyone for the kind words after my latest rejection on a full, this business is hard.

Peartree - I'm hearing this sort of story from all quarters right now, good books that should be picked up but aren't. Last agent rejection I got to a cold query said the industry is really tough right now and she's only taking on stuff that she is sure she can sell. I think the only way writers can deal with this is to know that the business will pick up again, and when it does we'll have more experience under our belts. Every book we write makes us a better writer.

EMaree - really looking forward to hearing your news!

I didn't think the market was so bad right now...

Still, I'll go on writing, mostly because I can't not write. I go crazy!

Collie · Oct 10, 2017

Sent out a batch of ten queries yesterday and woke to a form rejection. Good times.

sockycat · Oct 10, 2017

Yaay Emaree! Excited to hear your good news!

amillimiles · Oct 10, 2017

Aww sorry, peartree. Did you have people besides your mom read the project? Just want to make sure. My writing really started improving when I started posting in the Share Your Work forum here.

EMaree, can't wait to find out what the good news is!!

As for me, I received my first R today on a partial, argh! The agent said he found "much to admire, but wasn't ultimately convinced" he was the right agent for this. (Also curious as to how you guys can tell when it's a form rejection? I can't tell.) He also did say fiction is a very tough market right now... to echo NotForUs's comments. I wonder why the industry's tough right now? I work in finance, so I know exactly how to gauge the ups and downs of that industry, but no idea how the publishing industry swings.

With this response, I now have 1 R, 1 partial, 8 fulls, and 14 queries pending response. Trying to quell the rising paranoia by telling myself that it just takes one yes!!

Shoeless · Oct 10, 2017

The easiest way to tell is if they mention specifics of your book, such as character names or plot points. When they deal in generalities, it's a good bet you're dealing with a form. The phrases you mention from your rejection sound familiar to me, I may have gotten that specific phrasing for one of my own rejections while querying earlier in the year. But if they flat out say "I didn't fall in love with the way [character name] navigated the [plot point] then you know they're not pulling from a form slip.

JJ Litke · Oct 10, 2017

A lot of trade publishing sales dropped in 2016 (I think the election is often blamed for that). According to Jane Friedman, backlist sales are up, e-books are down, and audio has the biggest increases (that's a rough summary).

EMaree · Oct 10, 2017

amillimiles said:
Also curious as to how you guys can tell when it's a form rejection? I can't tell

Going to second Shoeless here. Unless they were *very* specific about details about my worldbuilding, or specific characters, I treated it as a form. And for all forms I basically pretended it was just the word 'No' and ignored all the other stuff.

Form rejection letters, by their generic nature, are pretty odd beasts. They're designed to apply to everyone in vague ways, so they're easy to apply to your book in a hundred weird ways. You will drive yourself batty if you try to apply them to your book!

RaggedEdge · Oct 10, 2017

Yay, EMaree! Rooting for you!!

Collie - Ugh. Sorry!!

amillimiles - I agree it sounds like a form R, and sorry about that by the way! They WILL happen, and it doesn't mean your book isn't perfect for someone else.

Also seconding EMaree to not apply the wording of a form R to your book. But I have to admit I find it rather obsessively interesting when an agency has different degrees of forms, i.e. one form R when the query is rejected by the assistant, another for when the query passed the assistant but not the agent, and one where the query (plus pages) passed the agent but they ultimately decided they didn't love the project enough to request the manuscript. All forms, all differently worded. I got rather excited once to get to the third stage for a superstar agent, and that form R actually felt a bit like a trophy :greenie

. I could see this and a few similar scenarios by following comments on QueryTracker.

S. Eli · Oct 10, 2017

RaggedEdge said:
But I have to admit I find it rather obsessively interesting when an agency has different degrees of forms, i.e. one form R rejected by the assistant, another for when the query passed the assistant but not the agent, and one where the query passed the agent but they ultimately decided they didn't love it enough to request pages. All forms, all differently worded. I got rather excited once to get to the third stage for a superstar agent, and that form R actually felt a bit like a trophy . I could see this and a few similar scenarios by following comments on QueryTracker.

I inspect all of my rejections for the form underneath all the [insert relevance to MS here], even in full Rs. lol i am also a little obsessed

amillimiles · Oct 10, 2017

Super helpful - thanks, guys! Definitely a form R, then, but I'll cheer myself by reminding that he only requested the partial ... so perhaps he didn't love it enough to begin with! The other full requests I got were solely based off of my query, which I'll also take as a good sign. *optimist who hasn't had her optimism knocked out of her through years of wallowing in the publishing biz*

JJ Litke - amazing article, and very interesting comment about the elections. I would think book sales should increase since people might bury their sorrows in books. Are there any good blogs anyone would recommend on trends in publishing, etc.? I follow a few and I read Jane Friedman, but always interested in reading more.

sockycat · Oct 11, 2017

Received two form rejections last night within 12 hrs of querying, buuuut I now have two partials out in addition to my full so I don't even mind

peartree · Oct 11, 2017

amillimiles said:
Aww sorry, peartree. Did you have people besides your mom read the project? Just want to make sure. My writing really started improving when I started posting in the Share Your Work forum here.

EMaree, can't wait to find out what the good news is!!

As for me, I received my first R today on a partial, argh! The agent said he found "much to admire, but wasn't ultimately convinced" he was the right agent for this. (Also curious as to how you guys can tell when it's a form rejection? I can't tell.) He also did say fiction is a very tough market right now... to echo NotForUs's comments. I wonder why the industry's tough right now? I work in finance, so I know exactly how to gauge the ups and downs of that industry, but no idea how the publishing industry swings.

With this response, I now have 1 R, 1 partial, 8 fulls, and 14 queries pending response. Trying to quell the rising paranoia by telling myself that it just takes one yes!!

I sent it to my sister and my cousin (the only people I really trust) and my sister liked it (it's not her kind of book, but she said it was a fun read) and my cousin didn't even bother. She's too busy with her glamorous life to talk to me much these days.

I saw in the rules you have to wait til 50 posts to post your stuff, so I'll just hang around and keep chatting til I hit that mark, and then I think I'll start with my query letter before actually posting my stories to the internet, even though it's supposed to be quite safe, you know, with timestamps and things to prove it's mine, plus all those queries I sent out is a huge digital "paper trail" of proof.

I'm paranoid about my work being stolen, in case you couldn't tell.

sockycat · Oct 11, 2017

peartree said:
I sent it to my sister and my cousin (the only people I really trust) and my sister liked it (it's not her kind of book, but she said it was a fun read) and my cousin didn't even bother. She's too busy with her glamorous life to talk to me much these days.

I saw in the rules you have to wait til 50 posts to post your stuff, so I'll just hang around and keep chatting til I hit that mark, and then I think I'll start with my query letter before actually posting my stories to the internet, even though it's supposed to be quite safe, you know, with timestamps and things to prove it's mine, plus all those queries I sent out is a huge digital "paper trail" of proof.

I'm paranoid about my work being stolen, in case you couldn't tell.

I would really encourage you to have you work looked at before you start querying, even if it's only as far as having your query letter critiqued in SYW.

Honestly, the best way to improve is to read and critique others. You learn so, so much. IMO the issues I found in other people's works tended to reflect on my own weaknesses, and it gave me a more critical eye towards my own writing. Other threads like the "first three lines of your novel" and "first three lines of your short story" are fantastic. You can learn a lot just by reading others.

peartree · Oct 11, 2017

sockycat said:
I would really encourage you to have you work looked at before you start querying, even if it's only as far as having your query letter critiqued in SYW.

Honestly, the best way to improve is to read and critique others. You learn so, so much. IMO the issues I found in other people's works tended to reflect on my own weaknesses, and it gave me a more critical eye towards my own writing. Other threads like the "first three lines of your novel" and "first three lines of your short story" are fantastic. You can learn a lot just by reading others.

Well I sent out this novel 103 times, so it's a bit late to do the "before I start" bit. But I've been working on that first novel since I started undergrad, 11 years ago, and I only started sending it out 2 years ago, after years of writing, re-writing, and critique from my family, so I'm pretty proud of it as it stands.

But I do hope this site will help me find my weaknesses, and fix them.

Shoeless · Oct 11, 2017

amillimiles said:
Super helpful - thanks, guys! Definitely a form R, then, but I'll cheer myself by reminding that he only requested the partial ... so perhaps he didn't love it enough to begin with! The other full requests I got were solely based off of my query, which I'll also take as a good sign. *optimist who hasn't had her optimism knocked out of her through years of wallowing in the publishing biz*

Just keep in mind that sometimes even a full request can get a form rejection. I've got a few of those sitting in my in-box.

I'm glad that form letters are no longer physical things that can be tacked onto a cork board. I'd need a cork board bigger than my house to properly lay them all out.

The Daily Rejection, Vol. 2

NotForUsThanks

Collie

sockycat

EMaree

a demon for tea

peartree

CameronJohnston

Great Old One

Collie

lianna williamson

peartree

NotForUsThanks

peartree

Collie

sockycat

amillimiles

Shoeless

JJ Litke

People are not wearing enough hats

EMaree

a demon for tea

RaggedEdge

I can do this

S. Eli

Custom User Title

amillimiles

sockycat

peartree

sockycat

peartree

Shoeless