No he probably hated the whole thing. That's why he asked for the full. To torture himself and read something he wasn't compelled to read.
um....so...
What do YOU think?
There is no need for a sarcastic reply.
Patricia doesn't know how to do sarcastic. Now if it had been me, it probably would have been, but Patricia's a warm and fuzzy person who has other people's best interests at heart. (Notice the sarcasm -- I don't like warm and fuzzy people -- I think they have a screw or two loose.) See, I don't care about making people feel better. I'm interested in helping people solve their problems and my entertainment. Patricia does care about people.
What Patricia was trying to do was force you out of the box your thinking is in. You're asking about specific work habits of individuals and there's no way anyone can answer your question. Even if an agent were to answer your question, there's no way to tell whether other agents work the same way.
My personal habits are sometimes I want more information after the first sentence of something, sometimes I want to read more. Answer is it depends. Think about people's book buying habits. A lot of people I know will sometimes decide to buy based solely on the cover. Sometimes the same people need to read the end flap as well. Sometimes the same people decide to read the first five pages to make the decision. Probably the closer to the line of accept/reject, probably the more that's read for the deciding to buy. It wouldn't surprise me if you do the same thing.
I think there are several possibilities. One is that she looked at the query, liked it, glanced briefly at the sample pages just to makre sure that there was nothing glaring, and went ahead and requested more. Some agents request materials based on queries alone.
A lot of agents do. Some agents don't. Depends upon an agent's decision making model.
Another is that she liked the query enough to not bother with sample pages. I don't know if agents do that. I'm sure some might.
I'm sure some agents do. And I imagine that a lot of agents don't.
Yet a third is that she read one of the five sample pages.
Absolutely a possibility.
My question was fairly specific...what is the likelyhood that an agent who asks for sample pages reads ALL of them, not some of them, not does she skim them, but does he/she actually READ all of them before requesting more.
And from your response to Patricia's sarcasm, you answered the question. Which is that there's no way to answer it. Back in high school you had teachers who'd tell you there was a right and a wrong answer. Real world doesn't operate that way. Sometimes there is no right or wrong answer and sometimes we just can't tell what the right or wrong answer is.
