The Daily Rejection, Vol. 3

[Woollybear]

IMO

It means they sometimes see projects that are close and they know how to get it across the finish line (e.g. change from third to first person, or move the order of the opening around, or change the age of the protag to fit a different market, or ratchet up one element and downplay another, or or or).... And sometimes they see a project that is close but they aren't sure what it needs, exactly, to sell.

They are thinking in terms of the readers and the market, because fitting those pieces together will get a bigger sale. We usually think in terms of story and character, which is a different angle of approach.

 

[Unimportant]

Can I get a translation on this please? (bolding mine)

Aside from "no" I'm not sure what she's saying.

It sounds like "I can't come up with a simple, concrete, actionable plan of edits off the top of my head that would let you revise this into a book I'd be able to successfully represent."

Which, like you said, could mean anything from "too riddled with SPaG" to "the plot meanders everywhere" to "I hate sassy female characters, period" to "not a genre I rep" to "take your racist, sexist, homophobic mess somewhere else" to "all the subplots tie together beautifully but this is twice the word count of what I can sell and I've no idea how to chop it to that degree" to....

 

[Brigid Barry]

How did you know it was a racist, homophonic, sexist mess riddled with SPaG errors with meandering plots that tie together beautifully and a sassy female protagonist?! it's like you read it!



ETA: ...it was a joke...

 

[Unimportant]

it's like you read it!

I didn't need to. I read your mind. (And found a typo.)

(hur hur hur, I am sooo funny.)

 

[Brigid Barry]

I didn't need to. I read your mind. (And found a typo.)

(hur hur hur, I am sooo funny.)

That's where I keep them. I have a collection. *points to a copse of swaying bitch trees*

 

[Unimportant]

*points to a copse corpse of swaying bitch trees*

Fixed that for ya.

 

[Nether]

Coming up on a lot of tacit rejections. Some agents have a no-response in 30 days policy, others have a 6-week policy. Granted, when relevant, I might wait one extra week before querying somebody else at their agency.

The big cliff is around October 15th (which is roughly 6 weeks after the last of my full first round), which I'll likely 'celebrate' in the topic. (Although... when people fall off cliffs, they become Highlanders, right?)

 

[Gehenna]

Coming up on a lot of tacit rejections. Some agents have a no-response in 30 days policy, others have a 6-week policy. Granted, when relevant, I might wait one extra week before querying somebody else at their agency.

The big cliff is around October 15th (which is roughly 6 weeks after the last of my full first round), which I'll likely 'celebrate' in the topic. (Although... when people fall off cliffs, they become Highlanders, right?)

There's plenty of time for good news! And for querying someone from the same agency- follow whatever time frame they give, but I would consider more than six weeks. I swear I got my rejections last year twice as fast. I've never had so many outstanding CNRs.

 

[Brigid Barry]

This is a slow time of year and a lot of agents are behind.

 

[alexp336]

30 days seems astonishingly ambitious for an agent to promise for turnaround. I queried someone this past week who said "feel free to nudge after 90 days" and thought that was surprisingly soon.

Anyway, fingers crossed that there's some good news before you move on to the next round...

 

[Brigid Barry]

30 days seems astonishingly ambitious for an agent to promise for turnaround. I queried someone this past week who said "feel free to nudge after 90 days" and thought that was surprisingly soon.

Ginger Clark says two weeks, but only if she's interested. Bethany Weaver, Mary C. Moore, and Caroline Trussell are all astonishingly fast responders.

For a query response 30 days is easy, assuming the agent isn't behind. I just queried someone who is working on their March submissions right now.

The Query Tracker timeline is totally worth it (I *think* it may only be for premium?)

In other news, right now I'm so discouraged with the whole trade pub process that I don't know if I'll bother querying my current project. I'll polish it until it's bright and shiny and keep it for when I want something to read. Kesia Lupo just did a Twitter thread about what's wrong with the industry (now that she is no longer an agent) and it's demoralizing.

 

[kitkatt33]

Ginger Clark says two weeks, but only if she's interested. Bethany Weaver, Mary C. Moore, and Caroline Trussell are all astonishingly fast responders.

For a query response 30 days is easy, assuming the agent isn't behind. I just queried someone who is working on their March submissions right now.

The Query Tracker timeline is totally worth it (I *think* it may only be for premium?)

In other news, right now I'm so discouraged with the whole trade pub process that I don't know if I'll bother querying my current project. I'll polish it until it's bright and shiny and keep it for when I want something to read. Kesia Lupo just did a Twitter thread about what's wrong with the industry (now that she is no longer an agent) and it's demoralizing.

What did she say? I think I heard she was no longer agent, but I'm not on twitter.

 

[Brigid Barry]

What did she say? I think I heard she was no longer agent, but I'm not on twitter.

This is the thread (which you should be able to read without and account): https://x.com/keslupo/status/1829604359430422615

 

[Gehenna]

This is the thread (which you should be able to read without and account): https://x.com/keslupo/status/1829604359430422615

That's a shame. I've queried her before, liked her "aura" or whatever u wanna call it. Hope she's enjoying her current gig, seems she's staying withing the industry.

 

[Brigid Barry]

That's a shame. I've queried her before, liked her "aura" or whatever u wanna call it. Hope she's enjoying her current gig, seems she's staying withing the industry.

She's very nice and provided tiered rejections with a key for what each meant. It was very helpful.

 

[kitkatt33]

This is the thread (which you should be able to read without and account): https://x.com/keslupo/status/1829604359430422615

Thank you. I appreciate it.

 

[gettingby]

I got another short story rejection. I get them all the time. Well, not all the time, but it's definitely most of the time.

 

[Janine R]

Read that an agent was closing to queries August 31, so fired off a query ( the first in months) and watched it on QueryTracker like it was an egg about to hatch/not hatch.
Answer came a few days ago, agent approaching maternity leave and had decided not to look at any more queries.
So not quite a rejection.

 

[Brigid Barry]

Read that an agent was closing to queries August 31, so fired off a query ( the first in months) and watched it on QueryTracker like it was an egg about to hatch/not hatch.
Answer came a few days ago, agent approaching maternity leave and had decided not to look at any more queries.
So not quite a rejection.

A friend of mine got this rejection too and it was quite the head scratcher.

 

[JackieMcMahonWriter]

Read that an agent was closing to queries August 31, so fired off a query ( the first in months) and watched it on QueryTracker like it was an egg about to hatch/not hatch.
Answer came a few days ago, agent approaching maternity leave and had decided not to look at any more queries.
So not quite a rejection.

Why be open to queries then if you're not going to consider them?

 

[Brigid Barry]

Why be open to queries then if you're not going to consider them?

And this is what the head scratching was about.

 

[Lakey]

Why be open to queries then if you're not going to consider them?

Is she still open? Or was she open until August 31 as @Janine R said? If the latter, I don’t see what’s strange about this. She set a deadline not knowing whether she would continue to consider queries or not, then reached the deadline date and decided not to. Am I missing something?

 

[JackieMcMahonWriter]

Is she still open? Or was she open until August 31 as @Janine R said? If the latter, I don’t see what’s strange about this. She set a deadline not knowing whether she would continue to consider queries or not, then reached the deadline date and decided not to. Am I missing something?

My interpretation of Janine's comment was that the agent said they were closing to queries on August 31st, Janine sent in the query before August 31st, and the agent sent a reply that they weren't considering these queries. So why not just close that day instead of giving people a chance to send in their queries before your leave? Maybe I'm interpreting this wrong but that doesn't make sense to me. My apologies if I'm misunderstanding.

I guess it's one thing if you genuinely intended to consider them, but life got in the way. In that case, I think it's fine to respond that you're not considering the queries at this time, but invite the authors to resubmit. I don't know if that was the case here.

 

[Lakey]

I see! I interpreted Janine’s post to mean the rejection had come after 8/31.

 

[Janine R]

I see! I interpreted Janine’s post to mean the rejection had come after 8/31.

Sorry all, I created confusion by mistyping the date. Deadline was July 31. Then by early September agent realized she wasn’t in a position to consider the late July queries because she was close to going on maternity leave. I can understand that. It was a little ironic for me in that it was the only query I had sent out in the last few months.