*Waves*
It's been a while since I've been in these parts. I see some familiar faces (hi, Belle, Lakey!).
I've been very slowly querying my most recent WIP over the past six months or so. So far, the result has been disappointing to say the least. I've sent 30 queries and gotten only one request, a partial that led to a form rejection. The rest were about 50/50 no-response/form rejections. I'm pretty confident in the query, and I've now tried a few different versions to see if that made any difference (it didn't). I'm even more confident in the WIP, which is what makes this so frustrating. I think it's a great ms with an interesting approach, and it happens to be about an eye-catching topic: the real family that inspired Peter Pan. And yet, not even the lure of a recognizable name has gotten me anywhere. It hasn't even gotten me the time of day.
I'm pretty despairing of the publishing industry as a whole. The business has been in a bad place for years, but it seems to be much worse now. I don't know that it's worth trying, except that I have to put up with the publishing industry if I ever want to get published, and I still do, in spite of all. Mostly, it's the readership factor. At this point, I'd still rather keep my mss to myself than self-publish them and have next-to-no-one ever read them.
My querying has been slow because I moved recently and had some health issues, and I've turned more and more to hobbies that give me some tangible result (historical sewing, namely; maybe I'll get back into art, too). But I believe in this project enough to keep trying to query it. The holidays is probably a bad time to make a big push, but I may send out a few queries in the coming weeks.
Oh, and I was hoping to maybe pitch this in person at a conference next year, but that's already been made all-virtual, so that won't be happening. That's kind of indicative of my luck in life. *Shrug* Better just keep trying, I guess.