Never got a Response?

ReflectiveAcuity · Nov 13, 2011

I first began submitting queries back in 2008 for a 118K-word memoir that included a history of the town where I grew up. After several rejections, I decided to self-print. I understood that the market for that particular work was probably limited; something that was later proven with just fewer than 200 books sold, to date, on Amazon and other sites. Up until that time, my writings (paid-for material) had been relegated to some trade publications (mostly travel magazines that were interested in my travels to Cuba) and writing contracts on oDesk.com (which, by the way, is a great place to make money as a writer if you want to dish out about 15-20 pages a day for an entire week…and receive a payment of about $45 for all that work.) Last week I began submitting queries once again for a 123K-word historical-fiction manuscript that I completed and then spent about six months polishing to perfection. I had, this time, studied the query process firmly and fervently, and thanks to the overwhelmingly-immense amount of information on the net about how to write that one-page letter (and thanks to many of you, as well, here at AW), I have no doubt that mine is as good as it’s going to be. Very importantly, I also studied which agents I should submit to. And with literary agencies now preferring to go green—saving trees…and all that—it seems that most now prefer queries by email, making the submission process a lot simpler. What I don’t understand is the agencies’ comments about not always being able to respond.

No response? An agency’s submission guidelines often offer a note (usually at the end) informing the author that they receive hundreds of query submissions a week—some say hundreds a day—and that it is impossible to respond to everyone. Because my writing is a heck of a lot better than my math, I seem to have difficulty grasping that notion.

I have lived fifty years (a whole half-century), and I think it would be fair to say that I have met several thousand human beings throughout the course of my lifetime (possibly a lot more). I have yet, however, met anyone who had told me that he or she had written a 120K-word manuscript, and much less anyone that had queried a publisher or literary agent. The what-are-the-odds-of-that thought sometimes rolls through my mind like a bad nightmare.

So who else out there is doing what I’m doing? What hundreds-of-query-submissions are literary agencies getting? From people wanting to publish a handful of pages with poetry? (I have met a lot of those).

Sure, sure, I know…just walk into any major book store and look around (or look at the amount of interest shown here on AW, for instance). It’s quite obvious that there are many others out there…somewhere. I’m not totally out of touch with reality.

Certain literary agencies receive hundreds of queries a day? Oh! So that’s why they don’t do television commercials.

Paul · Nov 13, 2011

em, welcome to the beginning of a long and often lonely road.

anyway, the questions you'll be asked is, did your research not suggest that getting a first novel of 123k words published would be more difficult than say, 90k?

and when did you send out your queries?

and, what's the beef? No responses?

ReflectiveAcuity · Nov 13, 2011

Paul said:
em, welcome to the beginning of a long and often lonely road.

anyway, the questions you'll be asked is, did your research not suggest that getting a first novel of 123k words published would be more difficult than say, 90k?

and when did you send out your queries?

and, what's the beef? No responses?

I began sending out queries about 10 days ago. I know it’s too soon for responses. I’m not complaining. I was just wondering, in general, about agents that never respond (unless interested in the work, of course).

I basically had no control over the word count. Once my hands start typing, they won’t stop until the story is done. And this story transports readers through decades from the 1950s through the 80’s, with flashbacks to WW II (the 40’s) when a couple in the story had met. Kind of hard to squeeze that into 90K words. At this point I would not be able to cut back the word count for this novel. That would be the equivalent, I think, of removing the arm or leg from my first born.

Drachen Jager · Nov 13, 2011

Most agencies see over 200 queries a week. That's why they all use form-letters or non-response to tell you they're not interested. Even taking a few minutes each would mean hours every month and days of productivity every year wasted.

Yes, there are thousands of other people shopping manuscripts 80k or longer right this minute. There are billions of people in the world, so it's not too surprising you haven't met any.

C'est la vie.

VictoriaWrites · Nov 13, 2011

ReflectiveAcuity said:
I basically had no control over the word count. Once my hands start typing, they won’t stop until the story is done. And this story transports readers through decades from the 1950s through the 80’s, with flashbacks to WW II (the 40’s) when a couple in the story had met. Kind of hard to squeeze that into 90K words. At this point I would not be able to cut back the word count for this novel. That would be the equivalent, I think, of removing the arm or leg from my first born.

I will be the first one to admit that I am super inexperienced and know basically nothing about querying agents. But... this worries me.

How did you not have control over your word count? I understand that first drafts are long for many people, but did you edit? Did you cut extraneous material?

And the bit about editing your novel being equivalent to removing an arm or a leg from your first born is probably not an attitude that will get you far in the publishing industry, IMHO.

happywritermom · Nov 13, 2011

I understand the trade-off -- the ease of equeries means more queries, which means agents have a much more difficult time responding -- but I also feel your pain.

When I first entered query hell about three years ago, it seemed most rejections came overnight. So did full and partial requests. The agent I ultimately signed with requested a full immediately and I signed with him about a week later.

Now, I must have about 30 unanswered queries out there, some as old as five or six weeks. Yet, I'm learning that the lack of immediate response does not necessarily mean no response. I am sometimes shocked to see a response in my inbox from an agent I queried almost two months before.

This time around, the average response time for a response seems to be about six weeks. Full requests have come any time from a few hours after querying to a few weeks. I'm waiting to hear back on a couple of fulls that have been out for two months. Three years ago, I would have nudged by now. This time around, I'm giving it three months before I even think about nudging.

You would be amazed how many writers -- good and bad -- are out there. With the advent of computers, high-speed internet and email, it's not all that hard for wanna-be writers to put together something they call a manuscript and start spamming every agent out there with it.
It's not that agents are getting more quality.
Rather the computer age has resulted in more quanity, much of it junk that agents have to sort through to find the gems.

Chumplet · Nov 13, 2011

If you go through your manuscript, you might cut several hundred words by cutting extra adjectives and extraneous words like "that." You might tighten your prose by showing rather than telling (I know I'm guilty of that). Without knowing if your manuscript is bloated, we can only offer general suggestions.

I assume you had beta readers or critique partners for your book. If not, stick around long enough to be eligible for Share Your Work and give us a sample of your writing. Even comments on a short chapter can give you the tools to tighten your whole manuscript.

Agents don't always respond. That sucks. I know because I've been querying one of my novels for over a year and over a hundred agents. Some were helpful, some asked for revisions but passed, and some only gave me the sound of crickets.

I think an important quality a writer should possess is patience.

ReflectiveAcuity · Nov 13, 2011

Drachen Jager said:
Yes, there are thousands of other people shopping manuscripts 80k or longer right this minute. There are billions of people in the world, so it's not too surprising you haven't met any.

I guess you're right. Come to think of it, I haven't met anyone that's flown to the moon either.

ReflectiveAcuity · Nov 13, 2011

VictoriaWrites said:
How did you not have control over your word count? I understand that first drafts are long for many people, but did you edit? Did you cut extraneous material?

And the bit about editing your novel being equivalent to removing an arm or a leg from your first born is probably not an attitude that will get you far in the publishing industry, IMHO.

I'm sorry, but if I can paraphrase what I stated, I would feel something similar to that of Picasso or Goya being asked to slice off a big chunk of their artwork after it was done. --- Yes, the manuscript has been edited and it was read by my wife, who said "it's great". (You may think that's a biased opinion, but believe me, she can be brutal).

Chumplet · Nov 13, 2011

ReflectiveAcuity said:
I'm sorry, but if I can paraphrase what I stated, I would feel something similar to that of Picasso or Goya being asked to slice off a big chunk of their artwork after it was done. --- Yes, the manuscript has been edited and it was read by my wife, who said "it's great". (You may think that's a biased opinion, but believe me, she can be brutal).

My parents read my books. My dad had many helpful comments. But they are family and they will be biased. Also, they are readers, not people in the industry who know the finer details on how a book is structured.

Getting feedback from other writers is priceless. Yes, they can nitpick, but if you get consistent comments from several people, you begin to see what needs work and what can stand alone.

Picasso and Goya destroyed, painted over and trashed countless paintings before they had something they could feel proud of. I'm a painter too, and my early work was crap.

We love our creations. They are precious to us. But we all need a little perspective once in a while.

jclarkdawe · Nov 13, 2011

ReflectiveAcuity said:
Last week I began submitting queries once again for a 123K-word historical-fiction manuscript that I completed and then spent about six months polishing to perfection. I had, this time, studied the query process firmly and fervently, and thanks to the overwhelmingly-immense amount of information on the net about how to write that one-page letter (and thanks to many of you, as well, here at AW), I have no doubt that mine is as good as it’s going to be. Emphasis added. I, however, have no doubt that your query has some problems. When you get up to 50 posts, if you dare, come on over to query letter hell in share your work and let the squirrels work on it. Take a look at some of my posts and if you're feeling real lucky, send me a PM and remind me I wanted to look at your query.

I could be wrong, but I've got some whiffs of problems in your queries already. But until I see the query, I can't decide which one(s) are going to show up there.

Certain literary agencies receive hundreds of queries a day? Oh! So that’s why they don’t do television commercials. Some agents receive in the range of 35k a year, based on their figures. I believe them. Figure a query takes about 30 seconds to process. A hundred a day takes an hour to go through. And 99% of the queries are rejected. A lot of fishing for very few fish that you want.

ReflectiveAcuity said:
I began sending out queries about 10 days ago. I know it’s too soon for responses. I’m not complaining. I was just wondering, in general, about agents that never respond (unless interested in the work, of course). No, it's not. Take a look at my thread -- An experiment with a query. People have gotten full requests in minutes from sending the query.

I basically had no control over the word count. Once my hands start typing, they won’t stop until the story is done. And this story transports readers through decades from the 1950s through the 80’s, with flashbacks to WW II (the 40’s) when a couple in the story had met. Kind of hard to squeeze that into 90K words. At this point I would not be able to cut back the word count for this novel. That would be the equivalent, I think, of removing the arm or leg from my first born. Two things concern me here.

First is you have what's called a cradle-to-grave story. Not meant as a compliment. These types of stories are incredibly hard to have a central arc to. Without knowing that central arc, the query is next to impossible. I've seen very few good queries for this type of book.

Second is not having control over your story sounds like editing problems. It wouldn't surprise me if that bleeds over into your query. Long books need incredibly tight queries to be successful. Long books with meandering queries warn an agent that editing needs to be done. Lots of editing.

I could be wrong here, and it's up to you, but I'm feeling some problems already without even seeing your query. I'm not an agent, but I look at a lot of queries and after a while, you get a feel for these sorts of things.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

Mclesh · Nov 13, 2011

Chumplet said:
My parents read my books. My dad had many helpful comments. But they are family and they will be biased. Also, they are readers, not people in the industry who know the finer details on how a book is structured.

Getting feedback from other writers is priceless. Yes, they can nitpick, but if you get consistent comments from several people, you begin to see what needs work and what can stand alone.

Picasso and Goya destroyed, painted over and trashed countless paintings before they had something they could feel proud of. I'm a painter too, and my early work was crap.

We love our creations. They are precious to us. But we all need a little perspective once in a while.

Chumplet, this is brilliant.

leahzero · Nov 13, 2011

ReflectiveAcuity said:
I'm sorry, but if I can paraphrase what I stated, I would feel something similar to that of Picasso or Goya being asked to slice off a big chunk of their artwork after it was done. --- Yes, the manuscript has been edited and it was read by my wife, who said "it's great". (You may think that's a biased opinion, but believe me, she can be brutal).

RA,

Just by your writing and communication approach in this thread, I have a strong intuition that your MS is probably verbose and digressive. There's likely a lot you can cut.

The point that previous posters were trying to make is the attitude "I won't harm my precious baby" is seriously detrimental to a writer who wants to be published commercially. The way you're expressing resistance to trimming your work to genre standards is very typical of beginning writers.

There's a popular phrase in writerdom: "Kill your darlings." It can mean a lot of things, but to me it especially means to not fall so in love with my words that I refuse to cut material, even when the cutting would improve the work.

I'll second Uncle Jim's suggestions: take the time to get to know AW, get your post count up, and share what you're comfortable sharing (your query, your first chapter, whatever). I'm sure your wife is a tough cookie, but there's no substitute for letting other writers of all skill and success levels slap some eyeballs on it.

Best of luck.

Cyia · Nov 13, 2011

It sounds like you may have a case of Golden Word Syndrome. Whether you want to believe it or not, you DO have control over what ends up in the final MS. What's final for you will NOT be what's final should that MS make it all the way to publication.

Thousands of books get published every year (commercially), those thousands are roughly a percentage of 1% of what gets written, so that tells you how much competition's out there. As far as how many queries an agent gets a day, my agent had a contest last week and got over 600 in an hour. (That's definitely higher than normal, but still a glimpse at how many people want a shot at publishing.)

It's not only time that makes an agent reluctant to reply, either. Many of the agents who have previously replied to all have stopped that policy because they get combative, aggressive, even threatening responses to very professional "not for me" answers. No one's going to continue doing something that puts them in the path of that kind of abuse.

Listen to jclarkdawe and turn the squirrels loose on your query when you've got the posts required to use Share Your Work. The people here are exceptional at pinpointing problems with execution and voice in a query, and doubly skilled at finding those pesky words you can't seem to cut.

Chumplet · Nov 13, 2011

Also, it's a good idea to read author's posts and blogs on how to receive critiques. There is a difference between a good critique and irresponsible criticism. Get feedback from many sources, choose what works for you and don't try to please everyone.

You might not please every agent, but there is probably one out there who will connect with your work and want to be your champion. Your job is to find that agent. Don't worry about the ones who don't respond, or give you a cursory rejection. Don't obsess. Don't give up. Don't ignore your peers who care for their fellow writers.

This is not a competition. Every good writer has a place in this big, bad, cruel, indifferent world of publishing.

Damn.... I think I have to go look at my MS again.

Jamiekswriter · Nov 14, 2011

Chumplet said:
My parents read my books.

Even the naughty ones????

Anyway to the OP, you might also want to do a find search for "LY" that will bring up all the adverbs. Cut 'em. Use a strong verb instead.

Also search on "said." You might not need all the ones that are there.

Do you have a prologue? You might be able to cut that too.

Definitely, post up in Query letter hell. The feedback is awesome.

I sent out over 100 queries and it took me about 18 months to get an agent. About 20% of the agents didn't respond, but most of them I knew going in they were a "no response = no agent." Keep trying and don't give up.

quicklime · Nov 14, 2011

reflective,

just jumping on the "I already get a bad vibe about several things" bandwagon. Now, that's not always a bad thing, and this isn't a pile-on: if you're certain it is golden, put some up and see what others think. See if there is a trend. You may indeed have something finished, but be aware whole orders of magnitude more people are fervently convinced of this than are correct. That is WHY the slush pile is so huge.

If you want us to say "agents is bastids for not responding", well, I'm sure some folks can do that, but most folks here are actually trying to help you. It may not LOOK like help, because they are dragging you far afield from where you thought you were headed in this thread, but their intentions are good. More importantly, they tend to be a pretty damn astute bunch. Make friends with QLH and SYW. See what folks there have to say; the advice is free, other than maybe having to wait a few more weeks to get your ducks in a row before more querying.

Quick

Cyia · Nov 14, 2011

ReflectiveAcuity said:
I understood that the market for that particular work was probably limited; something that was later proven with just fewer than 200 books sold, to date, on Amazon and other sites.

Let me also point out that 200 books sold may not be an indication of market-size, but rather a product of self-publishing. That's a pretty standard self-publishing sales total.

Chumplet · Nov 14, 2011

Jamiekswriter said:
Even the naughty ones????

I did not allow my dad to read the naughty one. But my mom did!

jaksen · Nov 14, 2011

Aren't historicals often 'longer' than say, ordinary fiction? Someone somewhere put up a 'typical' word count of various genres. I am not sure what thread it was on, or who did it, but I do recall historicals (along with fantasy epics) being on the longer side, even for a debut writer.

Anyhow, waiting two weeks for any kind of response from an agent is nothing, nada, like a mere breath. I've seen writers (on AW) who took up to a year to get a good agent, and another year before the book sold to a good publisher. This writing stuff takes time. Even sending in a short story to a good magazine can take up to nine months to get a response and then another six months to a year before it is published.

(I seem to like the word 'good.')

The thing to do while waiting is to always be writing - always be writing, AND to keep looking around, reading blogs and places like AW and Publisher's Marketplace for information on agents, agencies, and so on.

Good luck!

Raquel · Nov 14, 2011

I'd seriously suggest finding a great critique partner. My critique partners have taught me a ton about writing. Unfortunately it also ruined reading for me as I find myself wanting to grab a red pen and write in the margins of published books outlining holes in their plots before mailing it back to them (No I've never done this. It wouldn't do any good.) But I must say most everything I've learned about writing comes from the wonderful people who've taken hours of their time to teach me what I need to know to make my manuscript better.
The point is readers are far more forgiving than writers. If you want to make your manuscript fantastic you need people who know what they're talking about and have worked in the field of writing.

LaneHeymont · Nov 14, 2011

happywritermom said:
I understand the trade-off -- the ease of equeries means more queries, which means agents have a much more difficult time responding -- but I also feel your pain.

When I first entered query hell about three years ago, it seemed most rejections came overnight. So did full and partial requests. The agent I ultimately signed with requested a full immediately and I signed with him about a week later.

Now, I must have about 30 unanswered queries out there, some as old as five or six weeks. Yet, I'm learning that the lack of immediate response does not necessarily mean no response. I am sometimes shocked to see a response in my inbox from an agent I queried almost two months before.

This time around, the average response time for a response seems to be about six weeks. Full requests have come any time from a few hours after querying to a few weeks. I'm waiting to hear back on a couple of fulls that have been out for two months. Three years ago, I would have nudged by now. This time around, I'm giving it three months before I even think about nudging.

You would be amazed how many writers -- good and bad -- are out there. With the advent of computers, high-speed internet and email, it's not all that hard for wanna-be writers to put together something they call a manuscript and start spamming every agent out there with it.
It's not that agents are getting more quality.
Rather the computer age has resulted in more quanity, much of it junk that agents have to sort through to find the gems.

I didn't get any further in the thread than this, because you totally confused me (not hard lol). SO, you have an agent? Or you had one, parted ways and are now on the all consuming hunt for ANOTHER one? Why is finding an agent so much like hunting? lol

Cyia · Nov 14, 2011

lweinberg18 said:
I didn't get any further in the thread than this, because you totally confused me (not hard lol). SO, you have an agent? Or you had one, parted ways and are now on the all consuming hunt for ANOTHER one? Why is finding an agent so much like hunting? lol

As unlikely as it sounds, sometimes agent/author combos don't work out. Personalities clash, priorities change, new writers enter the mix, etc. Some agents also leave "the game", which means their writers have to find new representation.

LaneHeymont · Nov 14, 2011

Cyia said:
As unlikely as it sounds, sometimes agent/author combos don't work out. Personalities clash, priorities change, new writers enter the mix, etc. Some agents also leave "the game", which means their writers have to find new representation.

Oh, no I totally get and know that. I was just confused if THAT'S what happened...I didn't want to assume since...when you assume...

happywritermom · Nov 14, 2011

Cyia said:
As unlikely as it sounds, sometimes agent/author combos don't work out. Personalities clash, priorities change, new writers enter the mix, etc. Some agents also leave "the game", which means their writers have to find new representation.

What Cyia wrote.
I never thought I'd be doing this again.
I thought I'd found my forever-agent.
But it didn't work out for a bunch of reasons and I terminated my contract a few months ago.
So here I am again.
It's kind of like dating after divorce.
I'm much more leary and much more particular this time around.

Never got a Response?

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