What are my odds?

Undercover · Feb 11, 2011

Okay so I obsessively sent out my query/synopsis/first three chapters to like umm 100 agents. Ya, I went overboard. Anyways. So far I have gotten 19 rejections. But there was one that wanted to see the full and seemed really enthusiastic about it too. BUT, I have a long way to go. My negative ways are kickin in. What if this? What if that?

I know it only takes one, but I was really hoping to get more takers on the full. Sincerely, what are my odds at this one and only agent liking the whole thing?

CaroGirl · Feb 11, 2011

Relax.

Channel Han Solo: "Never tell me the odds."

kellion92 · Feb 11, 2011

You can't calculate odds because it's not a game of chance. Your success at attracting an agent depends on the effectiveness of your query, the book you've written, and whether agents think they can sell it. That's all.

quicklime · Feb 11, 2011

i don't think there is any way anyone could give you probability.....an agent who takes the query with minimal anthusiasm is obviously less likely than one who is hopping up and down, but by how much? What if the same agent takes it just before two of his major clients walk, or he signs Stephen King? What if you wrote a "cheating wife" story, and tomorrow he finds some racy e-mails between his spouse and a tennis instructor, and he's devastated? Any of these or a dozen other factors may affect how they view your script, and scripts in general.

I don;t think anyone can give you any sort of odds, although I CAN wish you luck

Toothpaste · Feb 11, 2011

I wrote a blog post about how it isn't about the odds, if you're interested in reading it. It basically says what the above posters have said, so yeah

. http://ididntchoosethis.blogspot.com/2010/01/its-not-about-odds.html

I will say that while I was lucky in being able to get an agent so quickly, she was the ONLY agent that requested a full from me. So it definitely is possible to have an agent say yes even if everyone else says no.

Fingers tightly crossed for you!

brainstorm77 · Feb 11, 2011

I don't think this can be answered.

Undercover · Feb 11, 2011

No, I didn't think so either, but for me, it helps to talk about it.

Toothpaste, I read the link, thanks! that's scary out of 38,000 only 6 were taken.

Kmarshall · Feb 11, 2011

Maybe you can't figure the odds, but you CAN look for trends. If you're lucky enough to get feedback, you might start to see if you have any weaknesses. I had three agents who requested a full cite the same issue. I revised, resubmitted and am now waiting. Ditto with the query. Since my revision was a major one, I had to redo the query, and came up with one that's working better. Rejections? Of course. Two of those were VERY encouraging. Basically they said 'it's obvious you've put a lot of work into this,' and 'this has nothing to do with your story or your writing, which are good, I'm just not the right agent for the material.' Why is this encouraging? It tells me I'm on the right track, that even though these agents rejected it, it wasn't necessarily for technical reasons. Let me put it this way...have you ever read a book that really sang to you but not to your friends? I LOVE Harry Potter--a colleague of mine loathes it. If we were agents and received a query, I'd take it, she wouldn't.

Undercover · Feb 11, 2011

Oh and another thing that's bothering me is well a couple. I read somewhere this agent doesn't really care for "dark" novels and I consider mine as kinda dark. Plus it's a YA novel too and it has a mild sex scene. Five "shit" words and one "asshole" word in it. I had "fuck" but I omitted them all. PLUS, it is only 31K words. Which is terribly low, but still do-able in YA. I went to the library the other day and cased the thin books and saw one as low as 68 pages. I worry about all this too.

Julie Worth · Feb 11, 2011

Lmc71775 said:
Okay so I obsessively sent out my query/synopsis/first three chapters to like umm 100 agents. Ya, I went overboard. Anyways. So far I have gotten 19 rejections. But there was one that wanted to see the full and seemed really enthusiastic about it too. BUT, I have a long way to go. My negative ways are kickin in. What if this? What if that?

I know it only takes one, but I was really hoping to get more takers on the full. Sincerely, what are my odds at this one and only agent liking the whole thing?

LMC, I can give you my experience on my present book. Over 4 months I sent out 125 queries and received 18 requests for the full and 2 for partials (one which turned into a full). I sent the query packages in groups, improving the package based on responses. It garnered one full request on the first 25 and 5 on the last 25, so it got considerably better.

About half of the requesting agents have yet to respond or have indicated it passed a first reading, while the other half declined, one with a suggestion for a rewrite that will be too difficult to do. So I'd say, don't count on the "it just takes one" notion. That is true with regard to offers to represent, but not for requests. Shoot for many full requests, polishing your query package to get them. Because you can't get too many.

As for the odds of this one agent liking your full, go to www.querytracker.net and look up her stats. (Find the agent, then click on Reports & Statistics/Submissions.)

Miriel · Feb 11, 2011

Once something is out, I try not to worry. Worrying is energy that could be put into another book, or cooking something delicious. I know saying "try not to think about it" isn't very helpful, but now all those queries are out...what else can you do?

Toothpaste · Feb 11, 2011

Lmc71775 said:
No, I didn't think so either, but for me, it helps to talk about it.

Toothpaste, I read the link, thanks! that's scary out of 38,000 only 6 were taken.

No! It wasn't meant to make you scared, lol. The point was that those numbers don't matter at all

. Oy. Sorry, I was trying to make you feel better.

Undercover · Feb 11, 2011

Actually the link made me feel better, it opened my eyes to a lot.

Julie, I wish I was in the position you are. Like I said, I wanted to get more agents interested, but that doesn't seem to be happening. Plus I think I ran out of places to send. I have about 80 floating out there, but the more time passes, the more I think no response means, "no."

Julie Worth · Feb 11, 2011

Lmc71775 said:
Actually the link made me feel better, it opened my eyes to a lot.

Julie, I wish I was in the position you are. Like I said, I wanted to get more agents interested, but that doesn't seem to be happening. Plus I think I ran out of places to send. I have about 80 floating out there, but the more time passes, the more I think no response means, "no."

Even the best queries get non-responses, but if you're seeing more than 1/3 non-responders, you need to improve your package. If you haven't already, you might want to post your query and your first five pages in the SYW area (which you've no doubt done as you've been here a while). As for agents, you haven't run out. Querytracker lists 298 US agents that are presently taking queries for YA.

That said, I'll bet some of your rejections are purely based on length. 31k seems short, even for YA.

Undercover · Feb 11, 2011

That said, I'll bet some of your rejections are purely based on length. 31k seems short, even for YA.

This is my biggest concern. I was surprised I even got one, to be honest.

Julie Worth · Feb 11, 2011

Lmc71775 said:
This is my biggest concern. I was surprised I even got one, to be honest.

Gatekeepers at agencies look for quick ways of kicking out a query. If it's below or above the agency's range, they can reject it without bothering to read it. On the other hand, you can sometimes turn a negative into a positive, as Nicholas Sparks did with his short first novel, The Notebook. (He had the gall to say it would save shelf space.)

Jamesaritchie · Feb 11, 2011

There are no odds. Either what you send is good enough, or it isn't. But 31k is going to cause a lot of non-responses. That's a good length for MG, but too short for almost all YA publishers. It certainly is not an impossible length to sell, but the length limits it, so most agents will pass on this alone.

And, yes, you went way, way, way, way overboard on number of queries. If there are any odds, querying in huge batches greatly lessons your chances of success. Doubly so since most agent don't want partials until after they've read the query and ask for a partial.

Fruitbat · Feb 11, 2011

Interesting thread. OP, I hope you will keep us posted. If it's found to be too dark and too short to be marketable after such a large batch of queries, maybe you'd want to consider making the current ending the low point, and adding on another 10,000 words that make a more hopeful ending, or weaving in a sub-plot or two, or however else you can make it more marketable without trashing your story. Good luck with it!

Julie Worth · Feb 11, 2011

Jamesaritchie said:
Either what you send is good enough, or it isn't.

This is simply not true. There are many reasons to reject an MS, and the writing is only one of them.

Jamesaritchie said:
And, yes, you went way, way, way, way overboard on number of queries. If there are any odds, querying in huge batches greatly lessons your chances of success. Doubly so since most agent don't want partials until after they've read the query and ask for a partial.

Again, you don't know what you're talking about, or else you're living in the past when everything was s-mail of carbon copies. In my most recent YA novel, querying by email, I received 18 full requests to only 2 partial requests. And that makes sense, as the cost is zero for both. In any case, your comment is illogical. How do more queries translate into worse odds? And how do partials make it doubly so?

djf881 · Feb 11, 2011

People who get requests for materials tend to get lots of requests for their materials. People who get offers tend to get multiple offers.

If you've got a commercially-viable concept and you've executed it competently, your odds of success are very high.

But everyone in the slushpile believes they have done this, and very few of them actually have.

Knowing nothing about you other than the signal-to-noise ratio of the slushpile, your odds are very low.

kaitie · Feb 11, 2011

I would suggest not sending out any more until you get a good idea of how well you're doing, though. Like others have said, one of the biggest advantages is being able to take the feedback you get and rewrite and query new people.

Did you post the query here to have it looked at? More than that, have you looked for ways to make it a bit longer? What have your beta readers said about the length? I do agree that some stories are just shorter or longer than others, but often there are ways to change things to make it more in line with what's expected.

In the mean time, you can keep working on the next book. My first book was too long, and I knew this when I went in. It had a couple of other flaws, too, which are mostly fixed now, but I knew the length would make it more difficult while querying. I made certain that the next book would be one that was more in line with expectations, though, and that's the one that's been a success for me.

You can't focus on things like the odds because it'll just drive you crazy. All you can do is keep working and keep trying and already be planning the next one.

Terie · Feb 11, 2011

djf881 said:
But everyone in the slushpile believes they have done this, and very few of them actually have.

Knowing nothing about you other than the signal-to-noise ratio of the slushpile, your odds are very low.

Except that in this case, the OP is talking about a requested full manuscript, which therefore isn't part of the slushpile.

However, the truth remains that there are no odds on this. If the manuscript is exactly what the agent is looking for, there's a nearly 100% chance they'll make an offer. If it isn't, there's a nearly 100% chance they won't. There's no way to predict which way it will go.

Undercover · Feb 11, 2011

I've often read that some agents want revisions made and will continue to consider it. It can be true in my case, right? She wanted a full ms. in regular mail too, I don't know if that makes any difference, which I am sure it doesn't.

I know I have slim to none odds here, if I really think about it. First of all, it's a low word count, one ding against me. Second of all I've read she doesn't like dark novels, that's two dings against me. What she saw in the first three chapters, the hell if I know. And thirdly, it has swearing and a sex scene, as I mentioned before, which may prove another reason why she might not like it.

Anyways...on a good note, I've NEVER gotten this far yet. I have never gotten an agent interested up to this point before. My first two novels had the same problem (short word count) so I would imagine that was one of the reasons for a decline right away. BUT those are being published without an agent, so it can happen.

I just thought of making the next step in my writing and did it as a fluke. Then it got obsessive after only the one showed an interest.

I sincerely doubt if I will get another taker for more. But I will say, I am happy to see my writing is improving.

MikeGrant · Feb 11, 2011

Toothpaste, I loved the lottery ticket analogy in your blog post. Very good!

Julie Worth · Feb 11, 2011

Terie said:
However, the truth remains that there are no odds on this. If the manuscript is exactly what the agent is looking for, there's a nearly 100% chance they'll make an offer. If it isn't, there's a nearly 100% chance they won't. There's no way to predict which way it will go.

Not quite true. Some agents are not selective about queries and ask for a lot of manuscripts, but then are extra selective on the fulls. Others ask for very few fulls but make a much larger percentage of offers. If it's the first case, you have little reason to hope, if it's the second, you do.

You can research these agent habits at querytracker.net, a truly great resource.

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