When to stop?

Dan Rhys

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I'm sorry about your experience...it was mine as well except hundreds of times over twelve years before I finally decided to hell with agents and moved on.

If I had to pinpoint precisely when to stop, I would say it is when you get the sense that you are not making any progress with agents/agencies regardless of any adjustments or improvements you make to your query or work. If you have drastically improved your query or your writing sample (both in your own eyes and in the eyes of a beta reader), yet month after month, no more agents are asking to see samples of your work for consideration or you keep getting form rejections, then that might be an indicator that the fish simply won't bite on this idea.

I knew I had no future with an agent when I wrote a second novel that was in every way better than my first one yet even FEWER agents asked to see a sample of it than of the first one. That told me that simply none would ever be open to my work regardless of its quality or commercial potential.

At the very least, though, I would give your work a year before either working on a new story or seeking alternatives to getting representation.