#amquerying hashtag: recording rejections

I've seen agents recommend cleaning up SM presence before querying and this would fall under that category in my mind.

I know some people do that, and it's so foreign to me. I process rejection privately; I sure don't want to be tossing it out onto social media. But I know for some people it's a coping mechanism: it makes an R just an ordinary occurrence, something they can share with their friends.

I honestly don't know how agents would react. Most of them have a lot more experience than the queriers (at least the first-time ones). I can see many of them not caring at all where they land on the author's preference list, as long as they've snagged a good book they can sell.

I suspect a lot of it depends on how the writer describes the rejection; feeling sad about an R is a different thing than ranting about the agent in question and/or publishing in general.

But yeah, always good to remember agents have computers, and will (IME) google you if they're interested.

Some people have apparently never heard of "oversharing".

Cephus said:

Some people have apparently never heard of "oversharing".

Click to expand...

I think that's a bit of a churlish take. Our own forums show that sharing rejection information can actually be a comfort, both to the person rejected and to other writers in the query trenches. A lot of people complain about how opaque the process is, and they're not wrong. Visibility into what others are going through can be a big help.

And yeah, rejections suck, and some people tend to vent more than others. I agree that oversharing does happen, and it can be problematic; but providing information or even expressing disappointment isn't necessarily an issue. It's human to look for support in a situation that feels outside one's control.

I'm also pretty sure agents are aware rejections sting. Unless someone is an egregious a*****e about it, I expect a little online weeping is probably forgivable.

I have a private and public Twitter. I would share things like rejections on the private one, which only my friends have. But sharing it on your public one really seems like a not-good idea. Then again, of all the Very Dumb Things one can do with their social media, it's lower on the list.