Where do we go from here?

Will it help if I tell you that you're not alone? This is Writing. Welcome home. And congrats on not choosing the less-than-stellar publishing house.

Have your beta-reads been by people other than family and friends? (Family and friends are not the best at the beta-reading, because they love you and because they have to live with you) Six months is no time at all in publishing, and a couple of queries signifies nothing. And - you'll like this - all things being equal, new, unpublished writers are at no disadvantage at all in the hearts of agents and publishers. They are new, they are unknown, and they are so, so exciting - if the book's good.

Settle in here for a while and find your way around. Having finished the book, and being ready to ask smart questions puts you ahead of most of the pack. Maybe don't send out again until you've had a chance to check out Query Letter Hell and the Bewares threads at the very least.

Good luck! These are for you

ETA: Yes, I would strongly advise trying to get an agent first. A good agent is worth her weight in gold; an agent will help you prepare for submission; and finally, an agent may have trouble re-submitting to publishers who've already seen the book.

Keep in mind that the current climate of querying is a veritable flood. When you decide to query, most of the agents you are querying get thousands of queries per year, so not only is it easy to get lost in the sheer flood of queries, which means that agents can take a lot of time, it also means that you're going up against a huge array of different "competitors," from writers who aren't even querying the right agent for the right genre of writing, to writers who are phenomenal talents with immediately marketable, commercial books. Most of us fall somewhere in between.

What this means is that most agents will be looking for excuses to stop reading a query, and either not-respond--if that's their agency policy--or send a form rejection. It's the only way they can feasibly get through a huge pile of queries to find the diamonds in the rough that are worth taking the next step of asking for a partial, asking for a full, offering representation, and then polishing further--if need be--for submission to acquiring editors. If you have a YA book and you send it to an agent that only takes adult fiction, as an example, you've made their job easier. If they specify a format they want to see queries in, and you don't follow it, you've made their job easier. If you write a weak query and trust that they'll understand the true value of the novel once they read the book itself themselves, again, you've given them an excuse to pass you over. Even something as unfair as you have a great book, but the agent recently signed someone who wrote something similar may be enough excuse to put you out of the running.

Essentially, when you decide go the query-route, you're learning the craft of giving agents as few excuses as possible to set aside your query in the first ten seconds, and keep reading. And even if you keep them reading, you have to be patient, and allow for fact that factors outside your control, that have nothing to do with the quality of your writing, may still result in a rejection. If you're submitting a drug abuse novel just as the market declares drug abuse stories have over-saturated the readership, that's not your fault, but it will be a factor in decision making for acquiring editors, and thus, for agents as well.

Querying is a tough experience. There are many, MANY people here at AW who have felt despair and severe self-doubt over the querying ordeal. I'm not even one of the most unusual stories for persistence, but it still took me many years, five books, and over 400 rejections from agents before I finally got offered representation and then sold a book to a publisher. You have to come into querying understanding that while there will be the occasional miracle story of a first-time writer getting an agent in less than a year, and then going to auction and getting a six figure deal, that won't happen to most writers. There will be a lot of rejection, a lot of time, and possibly even a lot of books. But there will also be steady improvement, and hopefully making some friends along the way, so that when the success does come, it means more.

The up side of which is that there are lots of great books that don't get an agent. Or published.

OP: Why do you want a big book deal? It's a serious question. The answer can help you look around at the other folks writing (different longevities, different goals, many with multiple paths, etc.) I think you should know the answer to the question. A lot of times here we assume (people assume) that everyone wants to 'win' and frankly, that's toxic mindset. You wrote a book. Getting an agent is great--Getting a publishing deal is great--earning out your advance is great--writing a good followup is great--(and so on).

There's no clear end to the stress as far as I can tell. Established authors continue to worry they will bomb.

So, it's not unwise to sort out for yourself what you want out of the book you wrote. You already got a big chunk of what you were after. You wrote a book. The book that was in your heart. How important is it to have acclaim? 10 readers? One million readers? A classic taught in high school lit?

(More random thoughts that probably are not relevant.)

If you've really only been rejected by two agents, I wouldn't start worrying yet! Almost every writer has to query a lot of agents before finding one, though it's wise to do it in batches (usually 3-5) and not contact a huge amount of agents at a time. Definitely keep working on your query, both by having others' read it and getting feedback from them and by reading query letters online (Query Shark might be a good place to start). But I'd keep trying agents for a while before I got discouraged.

Did you say 50 days? Fifty days is nothing in the publishing world. That's not even three months. Give it at least 3-6 months to hear back even on queries. If you get a bunch of rejections then rework the query. Settle down and relax because you're in this for the LONG haul and things move extremely slow in trade publishing. My advice is to work on something else while you wait if you haven't already.

cool pop said:

Did you say 50 days? Fifty days is nothing in the publishing world.

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Adorable, isn't it? Bless you, grasshopper...

Adding also that 50 days during the summer (especially to publishing houses) is like a day. Summer is ghastly slow. Hopefully you'll hear something soon, and take heart!

I think your partner was right to query. Aim big first, and if you fail, aim smaller.

How many agents have you queried? I know some might say that 50 days isn't long enough, but those 50 day old queries are most likely rejections by this point. If you've queried less than a 100 agents, keep trying. Two rejections is nothing unless you're not telling us about the other 98 agents who never responded. I'm guessing you haven't queried that many agents, so keep going. But first, rework your query letter if you've queried more than 10.

You only need one yes from an agent. And just because 99 other agents said, "no," doesn't mean your book is a failure. You could have a bad query, bad opening, or your market could be slow at the moment. But as the famous William Goldman quote goes, "Nobody knows anything." Maybe your book will set a new trend. You never know until you know. You have to try first, and you're just getting started.

mccardey said:

Adorable, isn't it? Bless you, grasshopper...

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LOL!

Hi brywin – I agree with others here, seven agents, two rejections and 50 days – that's nothing. People have sent out 100 and more queries and still landed an agent. Revising the query after the first batch with only rejections/no replies is a good idea, too, sure – but, be careful about changing sample pages. The general expectation from agents is seeing the FIRST pages, (and in the right order, too), not random pages from anywhere in the manuscript.

If you suspect your opening pages are not strong enough to hook an agent, then rewrite them. Because then they won't be strong enough to hook a publisher either, or readers browsing books online or in a store to find one they would like to buy. The potential to hook readers is one of the first things agents and publishers are looking for in a manuscript.