If an agent hates your work...

You will never know if they hate your work, only if they love it. 'I hate it' gets the same rejection letter as 'unutterable dreck', 'crappy writing', 'crappy story', 'almost there but not quite yet', 'wonderful but too much like something I represent', and 'wonderful but I don't think I can sell it'.

You can't read anything into form rejection letters, and trying to do so before one is even received....therein lies the way to madness.

Work on another book. That's what it takes to keep yourself sane.

And good luck!

What Terie said.

Plus: No, they won't get in touch sooner if they don't like it. It might sit on their desk/in their inbox for weeks before they even glance at it. A response will take how long it takes, and you can't read anything into that.

Keep in mind that exclusives are not a great deal for writers. Avoid them when you can. If you're really keen on the agent, then at least set a time frame on the exclusive so you'll know when you can move on again.

What Terie and Corine said. I do hope this exclusive has a term date.

Lapinou said:

I submitted my first two PB MSs to an agent on Friday. Yes, I know I won't hear yet! They've said up to 6 weeks. But, if they take one look at it and think it's a load of crap, won't they get back in touch sooner, rather than later? I'm assuming it will only take a long time if they want to keep looking at it, and thinking about it etc. before they say a definite yes?

The agent I submitted to said they preferred exclusive submissions, so I'm waiting for a rejection so I can look elsewhere! (pessimist? Moi?)

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Welcome!

It doesn't matter whether or not an agent hate your work, what matters is the agent or agents who love your work and want to represent it.

I would never submit to an agent who wants exclusive submissions, because I would feel stifled in my efforts to land an agent. Some writers query in batches of five, ten, and sometimes twenty. You need to find what works for you.

You said you are waiting for a rejection so you can submit elsewhere. I would certainly throw that attitude out. The only place negativity will get you is in negative land. Try and stay positive.

Rejection is a part of the writers life. But, it's a good idea to not submit anywhere if you feel you will just receive a rejection. This could mean you work is not ready yet.

Good luck!

Lapinou, every agent has a different way of approaching fulls so it's hard to say without knowing the person. One agent might not look at all for months, while another might read a bit (or have readers or interns read a bit) and eliminate some manuscripts more quickly.

I wouldn't worry about a so-called negative attitude. Some people find it easier to cope with waiting if they write off queries/fulls the instant they send them. That's not negative. It's a coping strategy, and your writing is already in the agent's hands no matter how much you hope or don't hope. You just have to wait, and it's easier to wait if you can send out more queries and work on a new book. Just go forward.

Agents want an exclusive because it takes time to get to any work, and time to decide whether you want it. This sucks when you decide you do want it, only to have it yanked out from under your feet at the last second.


Those who hate exclusives are spending way too much time worrying how long something is going to take, and it's just silly. If your work is any good, and exclusive does not slow the process of finding an agent. If your work isn't any good, nothing good will happen, anyway.


It's almost like writers expect their work to be rejected fifty times before finding a home. This only happens if the work has serious problems, or if the writer has no clue how to do agent research, and is simply submitting blindly.


Anyway, a story agents hate usually does get rejected faster than one they love, but it can still be six weeks before the agent takes the first look. You stories are part of a very large inventory, and they all get looked at first come, first look.

While there's always an exception, I don't beieve in giving exclusive submissions. You can easily get tied up with one agent for months (e.g., rewrites, vacations, too busy working with her signed clients) with nothing more than a hope that some day everything will work out and you'll get signed. Why tie yourself up, especially at this stage of your publishing life? If not already done I suggest you make a list of all the agents you want to contact and stagger your submissions. For example, one week send out 5 or so, 4 weeks later another 5, and so on.

Depends. If the agent doesn't pick up your work until six weeks and hates it, you'll hear right away. If an agent picks up your work right away and hates it, you'll hear. If an agent picks up your work in six weeks and loves it, you'll hear right away. If an agents picks up your work now and loves it, you'll hear right away.
Your MS will be in the queue and when the agent gets to it, he gets to it.

Lapinou said:

But everything you read about writing tells you that it's extremely difficult to get published, even if you are good, and that you may have to submit fifty times to get noticed - that, as well as being a good writer, you need to be determined and also lucky wrt submitting at the right time to the right agent/publisher.

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While all this is true to an extent, the better your writing the easier it is to get published. If your work is only just good enough you may take years to find someone who falls in love with it. If your writing is outstandingly good then everyone is going to want a slice of the action. Good writing really does stand out.

Fewer and fewer agents are requesting exclusives these days (my now former agent, N@than Bransf0rd recommended against them in fact -- only "former" because he left the biz, though I am very happy with my new agent too!). The only exception to that is when you're working with an agent on revisions—then it's considered pretty bad form to not give said agent first crack at the end result.

A lot of things are still done on handshakes in this business, and for the most part, I think people respect that. Your mileage may vary.

Jamesaritchie said:

...
Those who hate exclusives are spending way too much time worrying how long something is going to take, and it's just silly. If your work is any good, and exclusive does not slow the process of finding an agent. If your work isn't any good, nothing good will happen, anyway.


It's almost like writers expect their work to be rejected fifty times before finding a home. This only happens if the work has serious problems, or if the writer has no clue how to do agent research, and is simply submitting blindly....

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Have you looked at the percentage of queries that agents are accepting these days? Many agents are taking on an average of one client for every thousand queries or more that they receive. Do you really think all of those other 999 writers had serious problems in their work, or had no clue how to submit?

With odds like that, exclusives are a serious problem.

I kind of agree with Jamesaritchie. It reminds me of this blog post by Mary Kole -- "It's Easy to Get Published."

It is easy to get published... if you have an outstanding manuscript. The post says more than that, I recommend reading it, but I totally agree with that line of thinking.

JudyS said:

Many agents are taking on an average of one client for every thousand queries or more that they receive. Do you really think all of those other 999 writers had serious problems in their work, or had no clue how to submit?

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Not all, but very, very many - agents have replaced publishers as recipients of the slushpile, and email submissions make it ridiculously cheap and easy to query every agent in the book.

Is it time for the inevitable link to Slushkiller?

My guess is that out of every 1000 queries received, 950+ are going to fall into Slushkiller categories 1-10 and get rejected at the first hurdle. The remaining 20-50 receive requests for partials, which get winnowed down to the one manuscript that the agent thinks they have a very good chance of selling.

Doom and gloom on every writers' forums everywhere. Yet we are expected to stay positive and motivated. Oh well.

Anne, I agree with you. The numbers are indeed staggering. Up to 99% of queries are rejected every day, from what I've read on various reliable websites.

I also agree With JAR and exclusives. I think it's fair and it seems to be common industry practice.

It's a roll of the dice, no matter what, from query to partials to fulls. Even when you sign a contract with the agent, there's still the matter of selling to a publisher.

I wish you well, Lapinou and stay positive!

Lapinou said:

The agent I submitted to said they preferred exclusive submissions, so I'm waiting for a rejection so I can look elsewhere! (pessimist? Moi?)

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Preference is not insistence. I think you should submit to a few more.

JudyS said:

Have you looked at the percentage of queries that agents are accepting these days? Many agents are taking on an average of one client for every thousand queries or more that they receive. Do you really think all of those other 999 writers had serious problems in their work, or had no clue how to submit?

With odds like that, exclusives are a serious problem.

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The moment you start thinking about odds, you lose. Percentage has nothing to do with it. Odds have nothing to do with. I don't just think those 999 writers have serious problems with queries and actual writing, I know they do. I've read far more than my share of slush piles, both in query form, and in actual manuscript form, and I've gone months without finding a single writer who had a clue, especially about how to write a good query. Finding a good query is extremely rare.

Finding a good manuscript isn't much easier.

A certain percentage of good queries and manuscripts do get rejected because of fit, and an even smaller percentage because of simple oversight, but fit is something that's in the writer's control, and those tiny few that an agent or editor simply misjudges have no trouble at all finding a home elsewhere.

Going by odds is just wrong. The only way odds would matter is if every query and every manuscript had equal value, and an agent or editor selected what they wanted at random.

But here's the thing. I don't know of any agent who asks for an exclusive on a query. I don't think sending out big batch of queries all at once is at all smart, and when a writer tells me he just sent out a batch of a hundred queries I can be pretty certain every agent will say no. Certainly the good ones will.

Agents ask for exclusives on the actual manuscript, so even if going by the odds made sense, which it doesn't, you still couldn't apply that one in a thousand rule. When an agent or editor asks for a partial, or a complete manuscript, you've already jumped one big hurdle, which is getting their attention.

It just isn't smart to place an unneeded hurdle in you path by not granting an exclusive. Either this is an agent you really want, or you shouldn't have queried her in the first place. If you don't want her, don't query her. If you do want her, then play by her rules. She has them in place for good reason, and they're to your benefit as much as hers.

The surest way to waste time is by turning writing into a numbers game, by looking at the odds. The surest way to save time is by giving agents and editor what they want, the way they want it.

There aren't many really good agents out there for a given genre, and a poor agent is worse than no agent at all. If you want one of the good ones, you have to stop looking at numbers with no meaning, and concentrate on giving them what they want, the way they want it. Do this, and you'll land an agent and a publisher. Fail to do this, and you can spend years without landing either.