New Submission Guidelines at ABLA
Another not-an-ask post?! Wow!
Some of you gentle readers might remember that I've mentioned in the past how our agency submission guidelines were failing us. For a brief recap: Our original policy was "a no from one is a no from all." You had ONE chance to query the agency per submission, full stop.
People complained, so we changed it so that if you got a decline, you could try again, and then again -- so you had a total of THREE agents to query per submission.
Well -- that didn't work out great for US, because suddenly we were overwhelmed -- the number of queries per agent became absolutely out of control. (Like, double or even triple what had already been a large number!) -- AND, because of this, we were almost certainly missing out on some good stuff, either because one of the three people you chose wasn't the person who might have really loved it, or because the people you chose were overwhelmed -- so ultimately, everyone was unhappy.
GOOD NEWS: WE CHANGED OUR GUIDELINES AGAIN! <<<
click that link to read em! Please don't query if you haven't clicked on that link! <3
Now we ask you to choose ONE agent to query. Every agent WILL respond to all their queries. (Response times per agent vary, but every query
will get a response.)
BUT! We know it is hard to choose an agent to query, since there are 15 of us, and our tastes may overlap. So, should the agent you queried decline, we invite you to submit your work to the
ABLA Second Chance Inbox.
The ABLA Second Chance Inbox is a shared inbox that ALL the agents have access to --
even the agents who are currently closed to regular queries. This way we will all get a crack at EVERYTHING -- you'll know that multiple agents saw your work -- and hopefully our individual inboxes will be less overwhelming to navigate. WIN WIN WIN!
What to expect if you submit to the Second Chance Inbox:
You'll get a form indicating that your query to the shared inbox was received. If an agent is interested, they will forward the material to their own inbox, and reply to you directly.
However, with the Second Chance Inbox, you
will not get a decline -- this is because we want to make absolutely sure everyone who might be interested has had the chance to look. So if it has been longer than 12 weeks, you can consider a query to the Second Chance inbox a decline from ABLA.
This is a new query process, and I do expect there will be some questions that come up. I can answer them (probably), or I can figure out the answers, and we can tweak stuff as it comes up -- but I'm VERY EXCITED about this development and I hope it helps authors, too! <3