Critique Your Rejection

I just received one of those "standard" rejection e-letters from the Nelson Agency. It was meant to be a polite way to let any author down, I'm sure; however, it certainly wasn't thought through very well:
******************************************
Dear Author:



Thank you so much for sending the Nelson Literary Agency your query.



I’d like to apologize in advance for this standard rejection letter. The volume of queries as of late has been too overwhelming to personalize our response anymore. Rest assured, I do personally read every query letter and although your work sounds intriguing, I'm sorry to say that I don't believe I am the right agent for you.



You deserve an enthusiastic representative, so I recommend that you pursue other agents. After all, it just takes one "yes" and with so many different opinions out there, you could easily find the right match.



Good luck with all your publishing endeavors.



Sincerely,

Kristin Nelson
*******************************************

Its a standard letter she sends to all rejects. Does this mean that every single inquiry she get "sounds intriguing" to her? Maybe so but I somehow doubt it. It's like getting a pre-judged rejection.

J. Y. (Jean) Moore

Jamesaritchie said:

Nope, it all just means "I don't think I can sell your work, so I'm passing." That's all form rejections ever mean, regardless of the wording. THough this oen seems very well thought out to me.

Very few agents or editors ever offer personal comments/critiques unless they believe your work is of near professional quality and will sell with just a bit of varnish added.

If they think you're close to writing at professional level, and of telling a professional story, you usually receive comments. Otherwsie, it's a form rejection, and they all mean the sqame thing. "No thanks, I'm pretty sure I can't sell this."

Click to expand...

I'd have rather had the "I don't think... ." It's honest. The "...although your work sounds intriguing,... " is blowing smoke up... since it's a form letter (pardon me, a "standard rejection letter"). Believe me, I do appreciate her effort to be polite and I would certainly not want an agent who is less than enthusiastic about my work. However, using a personalized ("your") critique-type comment in a letter that goes to ALL her rejects regardless of the quality of the submission (unless she has more than one "standard rejection letter" for different levels of interest -- doubtful) is ludicrous. I am not criticizing her intent, just the letter. I actually think it was my own query letter that received the reject and I'm working on that (although not to send to Nelson).

There are, I'm sure, lots of us who have received shlock letters of one sort or another and I thought this thread might be a good way to critique them since the people who send them out are critiquing us. No harm, no foul -- vent a bit since rejection is, at best, frustrating.

blacbird said:

If you read it carefully aloud into a tape recorder, and then play the tape backwards, you'll find that, somewhere in the middle, it says: "Paul is dead."

bird

Click to expand...

Anybody else's "Form Letter"

Does anyone else have a "form letter" they'd like to critique? Ms. Nelson seems to be getting the brunt of this and that was not my original intent. Her letter was actually one of the nicest I have received. I'm just insensed that agents/publishers don't seem to require the same perfection in their own letters that they require of us hopefuls. How can they be judgemental of my work if they are not as critical of their own - particularly with something they know is to be a permanent part of their repertoire, sent and resent, ad infinitum.

smallthunder said:

Dear Author:
Thank you so much for sending the Nelson Literary Agency your query.

I’d like to apologize in advance for this standard rejection letter. The volume of queries as of late has been too overwhelming to personalize our response anymore. Rest assured, I do personally read every query letter and although your work sounds intriguing, I'm sorry to say that I don't believe I am the right agent for you.

You deserve an enthusiastic representative, so I recommend that you pursue other agents. After all, it just takes one "yes" and with so many different opinions out there, you could easily find the right match.

Good luck with all your publishing endeavors.

There's a great way to take the sting out of rejection letters -- check the thread "People! This is funny!" in the "Office Party" forum. There's a website that can take a text and rewrite it in a dialect -- from "Cockney" and "Redneck" to "Swedish Chef" and "Elmer Fudd."

I took the Nelson Agency's standard rejection letter, and ran it through this website -- too funny!

Give it a try -- the URL is given on the thread.



[I haven't posted it here because I want to give credit where credit is due.]

Click to expand...

Hilarious! I've put it in my favorites.