QUESTION: Email Agent Queries: No response means no? Or query got spam filtered?

crayon said:

How do you know that your email didn't get spam filtered (i.e. the agent never even read it) vs. simply never hearing back from the agent because the agent didn't like the novel idea?

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You can't know, unless they acknowledge receipt. We have to guess

crayon said:

would you go with snail mail to be sure the agent got the query?

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But snail mail can go missing as well.

It would be kinder on the submitter if every story recieved was acknowledged. But this would be time consuming and the agent/editor would spend more time sending acknowledgements than reading subs.

Just dig in for the wait. It usually takes months rather than weeks to get a response. I personally wouldn't chase for at least 3 months, but that depends on what you're querying and to where.

As opposed to sending hard copy: which I heard back from all 33 querys, email querys I probably heard back from half. So don't be discouraged, the intranets are impersonal.

Yes, start another book. the fastest responce I had was on an email query, 5 minutes to reject. I can wait a little bit longer than that. The longest -- well, I sent the full out in '98 and still haven't heard from them.

Oh, wait, yeah, that publisher went under a couple of years ago, so I'm thinking that's a rejection.

This is why I preferred snail queries to e-queries --- I got a virtually complete response rate from the snail queries.

I've got about a third of both kinds of queries that never responded. Some agents that say they respond to every query haven't. Some agents that say "silence=no" did actually send a rejection. And the agent who currently has my full requested it about six weeks after the "if-you-don't-hear-from-us, assume-we're-not-interested" time period had passed.

Personally...I wouldn't requery the same agents again. Too many have a policy of not responding to every query, and it could seem like stalking to keep sending it out again.

Unless...you make significant changes to the query and first chapters. Maybe even change the title. Then you can requery after a decent period of months have gone by.