Why do agents fail to e-mail rejections?

iwannabepublished

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I've been querying agents for some time and have lived through the change from snail-mail to e-mail. In the 'old days' a snail-mail query was always accompanied by the requested SASE. The vast majority of agents always used this, even though it was only to send a form rejection. Today most agents accept e-mail queries. In fact, many will only accept queries electronically submitted. Why now do many agents state that they will only respond to a query of they are interested? I understand agents are swamped with queries and would rather spend their time working with clients. Even so, I feel that the lack of a simple e-mail form rejection is an indication that an agent has less an less regard for potential authors. In fact, since it appears to be frowned on to send an e-mail query with a read receipt request, the prospective author has no way to even confirm their query was received. Based on this situation, I have seriously contemplated only querying those agents that accept snail-mail so I can send the old SASE and expect to receive some response, even if it is a form rejection. I must say that a few agents do send form e-mail rejections. Some even send personalized rejections. And a rarefied group even confirm receipt. Hooray for those caring agents.
 

ChaosTitan

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There are eleventy-billion threads that answer this same rant, but here goes:

Back in the days of snail mail queries, querying cost money, so queries were sent out very judiciously. Writers researched the agents they queried, because if they were going to spend two stamps, they wanted to get it right.

Nowadays, everyone wants to write a novel. And writers, because of the ease of shooting off a hundred queries in one single push of a button, are much less judicious in who they query. They spam agents. They query agents who don't rep their genre, because hey, it's email and it doesn't cost anything.

So agents are getting inundated with queries. Some of the more well-known agents have spoken of query inboxes numbering in the thousands per day. Many will receive several hundred a day. Even if, for example, it took an agent five seconds to reply and copy/paste a rejection, what if an agent had a thousand queries to respond to? That's eighty-three minutes spent replying to rejections--and that doesn't even count the ten to thirty seconds spent reading the query! That's hours of time spent reading and responding to queries, when there are other, client-related tasks to attend to.

And agent's job is not to answer queries. An agent's job is to sell books and negotiate deals for their CLIENTS. That will always be priority. If unsolicited queries end up not getting a response because the agent is busy doing their job, well... Really, would you want to sign with an agent that spent two hours a day answering queries, rather than selling your books?

You also mentioned that not responding reeks of a lack of regard. Well, what about the authors who mass-spam agents with queries? What about the authors who query an agent who says they aren't open to queries? What about the author who queries an agent who says they don't rep your genre? Doesn't that also show a blatant lack of regard for the agent and their stated guidelines? It works both ways.

Does the "no response" policy seem fair to the writers who do their homework, target their queries correctly, and follow the rules? Of course not. But as the old adage goes, "a single bad apple can spoil the barrel." It's a compromise on the part of the agent in what I can only imagine are overwhelming inbox numbers.
 

Maryn

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Quality answer there, ChaosTitan. If I were you, I'd save a copy for future pasting, since this comes up often.

Maryn, practical
 

MJNL

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I also like to look at it this way: When I send out an unsolicited manuscript, I've just become a door-to-door salesmen. Or worse, a telemarketer. Why? Because I've just intruded on someone’s day, asking them to "purchase" (the air quotes disappear if you're querying publishers directly) a product they didn't ask for.

I know many people who simply hang up on telemarketers without even a "No thanks." Is it rude? Sure. But, was it rude for them to call you? Perhaps.
(It's especially rude for them to call you if you aren't their target market, which--as was pointed out above--seems to be happening with agents more prevalently these days).

But yes, I defer to ChaosTian for a much more thorough explanation.
 

iwannabepublished

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Okay. I understand that this question has been asked a million times. I also completely accept most of what you have said. However, as a non published author, I do have complete respect for agents and the limited time they have to deal with queries. I always verify that the agent is open to e-mail submissions. I also always verify that the agent is interested in the genre of my work. Beyond that, I only query agents who operate web sites. I carefully read data on the web site and make an effort to confirm that there is a real possibility that the agent I am querying may be interested in my work.

I guess my big issue boils down to confirmation that the agent received my query to begin with. How does one know that they didn't receive as opposed to the 'silent' rejection?
 

ChaosTitan

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I guess my big issue boils down to confirmation that the agent received my query to begin with. How does one know that they didn't receive as opposed to the 'silent' rejection?

The vast majority of the time, it really is the silent rejection.

Once in a while, the query gets caught in a spam trap and never makes it. Once in a while, the query gets eaten by the internet and never arrives at all. Once in a while, the agent actually sends a positive response and it gets trapped in a spam folder/eaten by the internet/never makes it to the author, so the author assumes it's a no. It happens, sure, but in these cases the exceptions aren't going to change the current rule.

There is no perfect solution. And automated responses don't always work the way they're intended.

If it really, truly bothers you, the simplest solution for you is to just not query agents with a "no response=rejection" policy.
 

Parametric

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I guess my big issue boils down to confirmation that the agent received my query to begin with. How does one know that they didn't receive as opposed to the 'silent' rejection?

I do kind of agree with you here. Apart from the uncertainty for you, the agent is actually shooting themselves in the foot because people will query again thinking their first attempt might not have been received. If an agent has a no-reply policy, they should also have an automated response that (a) confirms the query has been received and (b) gives a timeframe in which to expect a response. After the timeframe is up, you know you've been rejected. Problem solved.
 

kaitie

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There's another reason that hasn't been mentioned: some authors as asshats who ruin it for other people. With email, it's become more common for the jerks out there to respond to rejections. I've seen several of these posted on agents' sites, and I've seen one agent directly cite this as her reason for going to a no-response policy. I've heard it said that only something like ten percent of people do this, and it might even be less, but if you're getting as many queries as these agents get, that adds up. A few people behaving badly have provided a great incentive for agents to stop responding, which is unfortunate for those of us who do things right.
 

Devil Ledbetter

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Since you can't change agents' behaviors and make them reply with rejections, the next best thing is to mentally reframe the silent rejection.

1. Email is pretty reliable, so if you sent it to the right address and didn't get a mailerdaemon error message (recipient inbox full, for example), chances are excellent it landed in the agent's inbox. Whether or not you had the address right is easy enough to check yourself by comparing the sent message header to the agent's address.

2. Assume a silent rejection from any agent you haven't heard from after 6 weeks. If you get a request for a partial or full after 6 weeks of silence, well, that's a lovely surprise, right?

3. Do you even want to work with the sort of agent who won't send a form rejection? Maybe not. I wouldn't mind it myself, since it would mean she'd have more time to focus on her clients.
 

fourlittlebees

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Honestly? I'd rather agents move away from the email query and switch to the online form. It keeps to the green mentality, but gets away from the spam mentality, because it goes back to requiring work. The agents I queries who used forms required more thought than even a snail mail query, and took just as much time and effort on my part. I think it would cut down on the amount of spam queries agents received.

The bad apple analogy is a good one. You have the people who protest the form rejections. People who protest the personal rejections (which results in form rejections even on fulls for the rest of us). You have those who requery because they decided the first submission wasn't ready and needed edits (uh, don't query in the first place). For every rule-follower, there are probably 100 rule-breakers because people want fast and easy and simple and don't research before they start querying. Or don't have manners. And yes, it ruins it for everyone else. I'm eternally grateful to every agent who hasn't waved a white flag in the face of those bad apples, but they are fast becoming the exceptions. Just like us.
 

raburrell

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My agent is a non-responder, I think. (So sayeth QT). I'm not sure of her reason, though I suspect it's mostly time management - she's very prompt about replying to my emails now that I'm her client, and she has been from even before then. So a no response agent is not necessarily a non-communicative agent at all. (essentially as DL says, making existing clients a priority instead)

Without meaning to be harsh [I didn't query much, but I'll freely admit that every 'no' had me in tears], a query is in most cases, an unsolicited business inquiry. I certainly don't reply to every advertisement I receive in the mail, even though someone else's blood sweat and tears went into creating whatever business they're trying to sell. Yes, a book is a very personal 'business' and the querying process is hugely, hugely frustrating, mostly blind in terms of what didn't work, and much of it is annoyingly out of your control, but any good business person knows that you can't sit around and wait for one perfect customer to come your way. Just keep at it. When an agent is interested, you'll know :)

Whether it's a no or a non-answer or even the damnable 'went-missing', chances are it wasn't the one that was meant to be. Keep sending out in hopes of the one that is :)
 

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3. Do you even want to work with the sort of agent who won't send a form rejection? Maybe not. I wouldn't mind it myself, since it would mean she'd have more time to focus on her clients.

Exactly. I don't think people should assume that a non-responding agent (at initial query stage) is in any way unprofessional/uncaring/selfish.

It's not uncommon practice in other areas of business. I'm probably immune to the whole no-response thing from doing occasional casual office temping over the years. I'd apply to over a dozen jobs a week, and unless they were interested in me I'd never get any form of acknowledgement. When the site stats tell you that an advertisement has received 438 other applications, you can see why! Whether the bulk of those are carefully targeted applications from qualified candidates (like our queries ;)), hopelessly unqualified or just scatter-gunned résumés (like those queries that form the quagmire ours drown in :evil), responding to all of them with a form rejection just to give applicants closure would entail a huge investment of time that would be better spent on other tasks. I can respect that.

ETA: I do think though that a dedicated query inbox with an automated response "message received, but you'll only hear from us if we're interested" (only less blunt) should be standard to remove any doubt over whether it got through and avoid subsequent re-querying, which is a waste of the agent's time as well as the author's. If there are agencies that don't do this simple thing... I really can't imagine why.
 
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shelleyo

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So agents are getting inundated with queries. Some of the more well-known agents have spoken of query inboxes numbering in the thousands per day.

I agree with everything you've said. However, I find it really hard to believe them that one agent may get thousands of queries in one day. Thousands, even taken at its most conservation 2000 number would mean 60,000 queries a month, and a quarter of a million a year, to one agent? I doubt it.

I'm sure they get a lot, but not that much.

Shelley
 

gothicangel

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I agree with everything you've said. However, I find it really hard to believe them that one agent may get thousands of queries in one day. Thousands, even taken at its most conservation 2000 number would mean 60,000 queries a month, and a quarter of a million a year, to one agent? I doubt it.

I'm sure they get a lot, but not that much.

Shelley

Believe me, you would be surprised.
 

ChaosTitan

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I agree with everything you've said. However, I find it really hard to believe them that one agent may get thousands of queries in one day. Thousands, even taken at its most conservation 2000 number would mean 60,000 queries a month, and a quarter of a million a year, to one agent? I doubt it.

I'm sure they get a lot, but not that much.

Shelley

I doubt the agent who made the comment meant they get that many every day, seven days a week. But even once or twice a month can be challenging, when queries never stop coming thanks to the internet.

But there might also be a day or two where the agent can't get to the queries (because they're busy doing, you know, client stuff), so more and more build up and suddenly they're looking at an overwhelming inbox.
 

Lucy

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One of the reasons for the silent rejection is the risk of a writer replying, trying to get more out of the agent (which takes up more time). And sometimes people can respond badly to rejection, posting their rejection letters online with nasty comments and so forth. It just seems easier to not reply.
 

kellion92

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Agents can do whatever they wish, of course, and ignore queries for any reason they like, but the "no time" excuse is weak. It's easy enough to set up a form response that takes no more time to send than it would to delete the email. An online submission system could be even quicker -- the agent can check "reject" in a list queries -- or even check "reject all" -- and send off a nice, personalized-looking response coming from a dead-drop no-response mailbox. Quick, polite, no nasty hate mail.

This is simple stuff -- nothing expensive.
 

third person

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Make sure you use an email service that is more likely to NOT end up in an agent's spam folder. Yahoo tends to do this a lot. I use Gmail and test my queries out by sending it to myself on several email services to see whether it gets auto-sorted as spam or not.
 

kellion92

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A) Agents don't have to read the hate mail. i bet that non-responses attract hate mail, not to mention status queries and duplicate queries from well-meaning writers.

B) If the agent uses an online form and sends the rejection from a dedicated email address (like the kind you get with Facebook or Twitter notifications but can't respond to), s/he won't get the hate mail.

It's not that hard. An agent who is supposedly an expert in negotiations and digital rights should be able to figure out how to get this done.
 

Tromboli

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Honestly, I've got a list of around 30 agents to query currently and maybe 5 of them are no responders. Maybe I just happened to pick out a bunch who happen to always respond, but even the bigs guys say they will respond to every query, but it seems to me that its not as common as its made out to be.

As a writer I personally don't like the idea of not responding but I can sympathize with the agents and know why they do it. I hold no grudge. I simply move them down a few places on my list (in general) if they don't respond.

On another subject, I have one agency high on my list that I won't query til half way through (most likely) because they expect exclusives.

All of the ways agents handle submissions should be taken into account but not held against the agent. If its something that bothers you either don't query them or deal. Up to you.