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A Solid Nibble
Apr. 28th, 2015 01:24 pmBack in January, one of the literary agents I queried wrote back to say she was really inundated with a backlog of query letters and therefore had a temporary moratorium on looking at new submissions, but if I were still looking for representation in April I should feel free to contact her again.
More polite by far than the typical "Sorry I'm really busy and not taking on any new work at the moment" rejection letters. Needless to say, April came around and I was still without agent so I resent my letter along with a note that she'd invited me to do so. This time I got this reply: "Still very busy here but send me the first 50 pages and if I get pulled into the story we'll take it from there".
I should pause here and explain that some agents want your intial query to contain anything from the first 3 pages on up in addition to the query letter, along with perhaps a synopsis, often a self-descrip itemizing your prior publications and qualifications, sometimes with a complete formal proposal with review of comparable literature and marketing plan; other agents just want the query letter and if they want to see more at that point they'll ask for it. This agent's profile put her in the latter camp. So this was her asking for a sample that other agents might have expected as part of the initial query. That's still not to be minimized though: any time a lit agent asks for anything above and beyond what their profile says to send in the initial pitch letter, that indicates some degree of interest in the author's project. And I only get a tiny and rarefied handful of those.
But now it gets better. Last week she wrote to say that it's "a little bumpy in places" but she was sufficiently interested to have me go ahead and send in the entire manuscript, hard copy printout, and give her a few weeks to examine it.
This, in the writer's vernacular, is the fabled "request for a full".
I am repeating to myself, mantra-style, that this does not mean I'm finally going to have an agent. Or that it's more likely than not that it will go that way. But it's very exciting.
Current Stats:
The Story of Q, total queries: 542
Rejections: 513
Outstanding: 28
Under Consideration: 1
As Nonfiction: (total queries): 358
Rejections: 340
Outstanding: 18
As Fiction: (total queries): 184
Rejections: 173
Outstanding: 10
Under Consideration: 1
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Index of all Blog Posts
More polite by far than the typical "Sorry I'm really busy and not taking on any new work at the moment" rejection letters. Needless to say, April came around and I was still without agent so I resent my letter along with a note that she'd invited me to do so. This time I got this reply: "Still very busy here but send me the first 50 pages and if I get pulled into the story we'll take it from there".
I should pause here and explain that some agents want your intial query to contain anything from the first 3 pages on up in addition to the query letter, along with perhaps a synopsis, often a self-descrip itemizing your prior publications and qualifications, sometimes with a complete formal proposal with review of comparable literature and marketing plan; other agents just want the query letter and if they want to see more at that point they'll ask for it. This agent's profile put her in the latter camp. So this was her asking for a sample that other agents might have expected as part of the initial query. That's still not to be minimized though: any time a lit agent asks for anything above and beyond what their profile says to send in the initial pitch letter, that indicates some degree of interest in the author's project. And I only get a tiny and rarefied handful of those.
But now it gets better. Last week she wrote to say that it's "a little bumpy in places" but she was sufficiently interested to have me go ahead and send in the entire manuscript, hard copy printout, and give her a few weeks to examine it.
This, in the writer's vernacular, is the fabled "request for a full".
I am repeating to myself, mantra-style, that this does not mean I'm finally going to have an agent. Or that it's more likely than not that it will go that way. But it's very exciting.
Current Stats:
The Story of Q, total queries: 542
Rejections: 513
Outstanding: 28
Under Consideration: 1
As Nonfiction: (total queries): 358
Rejections: 340
Outstanding: 18
As Fiction: (total queries): 184
Rejections: 173
Outstanding: 10
Under Consideration: 1
————————
Index of all Blog Posts
