Proposing a New Kind of Form Rejection

If you could design a program that sent a push button reject when the agent hit that number, you might have something there.

It would let you know where they lost interest.

Agents are crunched for time as it is. That's why the whole "no answer = rejection" trend is growing.

The only thing I wish agents would do differently is to specifically say on their websites "no answer after X days/weeks/months" is a rejection. Some do, some don't, it's just hard to keep track of the ones who don't. Not the end of the world either way, just how I'd like to see things in my ideal world.

That's a very interesting idea that would take no extra time from agents and actually be helpful. The first agent who tried it would probably seem a little mean, especially if they had a lot of 5's and 10's.

kellion92 said:

That's a very interesting idea that would take no extra time from agents and actually be helpful. The first agent who tried it would probably seem a little mean, especially if they had a lot of 5's and 10's.

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On paper, it sounds like it wouldn't take a lot of extra time. In practice, I'm not so sure.

While it certainly sounds simple to just jot down a page number, think of it from the agent's perspective: Reading a manuscript, lose interest, put it down, go to send the rejection and - aw, crap, forgot to write down the page number. So, do you make one up? Stop and find the page number? Give a general guesstimate? Leave it blank?

I could be completely of the mark here, I'm just thinking this will add another step - however minute - to an agent's routine. When I worked a desk job, I'd get into a groove, and adding even a small step like that could be jarring to the point I wanted to tear my hair out.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to know at what point I lost the agent's interest. But on the other hand, as I said, they're crunched for time and under a lot of pressure anyway. That's why they have form rejections and things like that to begin with.

popmuze said:

All they'd have to do is write the page number on the top of the manuscript when they lose interest. It would also save them the time of picking which of the several form rejections they've got at their disposal--the typical form, the form for better than average, the form for almost but not quite. All of them written out as if to seem personalized. This would eliminate the fake personalized form ("You obviously can write. Your story is intriguing." Both of these can be gleaned from the query!)

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Great idea from the writers' perspective, for sure. But likely not at all practicable.

One problem I see is most read on ereaders, and therefore couldn't "jot" the number anywhere, especially if reading on the subway, treadmill, etc.

Plus, not to be callous, but the agent has no incentive whatsoever to put even 2 seconds more into something they are rejecting. So, why bother? (And yes, I'm being intentionally negative in my tone here - some agents *do* already put more effort than others into rejections - but most simply have no incentive to do so, and just to be helpful isn't enough).

~suki

That would be nice. I once knew exactly how far an agent got because she'd put a colored piece of paper in as her marker and sent my material back to me (she didn't accept emails at the time, does now though). She actually did write a short note on the first page, telling me what she thought it was lacking. She'd made it to page 32. Not too bad, I guess. I've been very fortunate in getting a lot of feed back from agents. Even if it's just a sentence or two, at least I know they either hated it enough or thought it had enough potential to take time out of their busy day to comment on it. It would be nice to know how far they got. Did they even read past the first paragraph? Then you'd know your beginning (at the very least) sucked and needed to be redone.

I wish there was a better method, but I've heard too many people recontact the agents after rejections, trying to argue with them about how if they'd only read a little more, etc., etc.

Sounds like a great idea, now just find out how to make them follow it

I propose a universally accepted coding system. Like health insurance companies do: "Your claim is being rejected for the following reason: Error 4."

Some suggested codes:
1= your first few paragraphs/pages didn't grab me
2= your writing needs work
3= your MC seems too passive
4= I've seen this same premise once too many times and this adds nothing new to the genre
5= the pacing is too slow/fast/demonstrates your need to lay off the crystal meth
6= I was only doing you a favor because you were my college roommate
7= something about the plot reminded me of an old MacGuyver episode
8= the gravy stains on your ms turned me off
9= this was so bad that I have asked my lawyer to inititate a restraining order against you
10= I was too drunk to read it all the way through and then too hungover to try again

Honestly, I know far too many would-be authors who get so indignant that an agent hasn't read their whole work and say things like, "How can they possibly know if it's good or not after 10 pages??" I think if agents were honest about how many pages they read (which I imagine in most rejected MSs is simply not that many), they would get a lot of irate responses in return citing their ignorance, unprofessionalism etc.

I agree for the sane authors, like us, it would be helpful, unfortunately, as we have discovered in many a thread, we are the exception to the rule. Same old story of the crazies ruining it for everyone else . . .

"How can they possibly know if it's good or not after 10 pages??"

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Don't remember where I heard it, but I like the reply: "You don't need to eat an entire apple to know that it's rotten."

I don't know, a no is a no is a no. Just reject me and let me move on. It gets to the point where I just scan down to the last line and if I see 'wish you luck' or 'someone may feel differently' I hit delete without reading the rest and let it go.

It's been my experience that if an agent gets past the first five pages, they usually do read the entire novel. Any form rejection usually mean the agent didn't get past the first five pages.

popmuze said:

It would take less time than they're already spending in selecting the type of form rejection and then typing it out to seem personalized. Plus, if all agents adopted this approach, eventually writers would come to expect, if not look forward to, what kind of number their manuscript got from a particular agent.

Agents also would get reputations. For instance, Agent X would be known as one who rejects things in the least amount of pages. Agent Y (just starting his practice) would be known as the one who reads the entire thing.

I also think it's most deceptive when an agent makes general remarks about characters, plot, pacing and language based on a few pages when writers may be assuming they've read a whole lot more. It gives false hope to too many writers. This new system would take all the guesswork out of it, all the emotionality. And if an agent did decide to offer you a personalized comment, it would be obvious and probably well-earned.

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Yes, but again, you're looking at it from the writer's perspective. Not the agent's.

If I were an agent, I wouldn't put any extra effort whatsoever into rejections. None. There's nothing in it for me.

And pasting a form R (and I'll agree with you that some are misleading, and I think the cold but efficient, "Thank you for submitting but I will not be requesting more." is more honest), would be the least effort possible.

So, unless I see something that makes me want to take 10 seconds or 2 minutes to write something more in the R, I would not even be willing to glance at the page number - especially on an ereader, where most agents read.

Again, may be selfish, but once it's an R, I wouldn't waste another brain cell or second on it.

So, from the writer's perspective, I could see the benefit, but not from the agent's. Sorry.

~suki

popmuze said:

It would take less time than they're already spending in selecting the type of form rejection and then typing it out to seem personalized. Plus, if all agents adopted this approach, eventually writers would come to expect, if not look forward to, what kind of number their manuscript got from a particular agent.

Agents also would get reputations. For instance, Agent X would be known as one who rejects things in the least amount of pages. Agent Y (just starting his practice) would be known as the one who reads the entire thing.

I also think it's most deceptive when an agent makes general remarks about characters, plot, pacing and language based on a few pages when writers may be assuming they've read a whole lot more. It gives false hope to too many writers. This new system would take all the guesswork out of it, all the emotionality. And if an agent did decide to offer you a personalized comment, it would be obvious and probably well-earned.

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It just ain't gonna happen. It would take a lot of time, and you're assuming agents select type of personalized rejection slip and then type it out. I don't know any who do this. Quote often, the "personalized" rejection is an automatic procedure, and teh rest of the time it's handled by an assistant who doesn't have a clue what the agent really thought about the manuscript. Agents typically spend no time at all on handling rejections themselves. They can't, because they simply do not have any time to spare.

I think many writers assume that agents spend days every week handling the slush. An agent who does is a bad agent. Agents spend almost all their time handling the writers already in their stables, and they're luck if they have more than one day per week to handle up to a thousand queries. Any system that adds a second to the time they spend is a bad, bad system, and ths system would add a lot of time.

And agents already have reputation. Either they're very good at finding good books and selling them to commercial publlishaers, or they aren't. That's the only reputation that matters.

Personalized comments, real ones, are already extremely obvious, and always earned. You can't mistake them. Anything else, no matter what how it reads, is completely meaningless. There's no deception there. It just means NO! Some agents try to be nice about it, some do not, but there is no halfway point. Either you get a true personalized rejection which you can't mistake, or you get a NO!