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Querying thoughts & future plans
Jan. 14th, 2017 05:10 pmI rang in the new year by sending a query letter to and getting rejected by yet another agent, which brings my total up to 6 rejections and 1 no response (which I'm not sure whether that means a rejection or the agent's very slow in asking for partial requests).
As a fledging author who's new to the whole trying-to-get-published process, one thing that I've found to be frustrating about the querying process is that rejections often feel like a game of "guess what's going on in an agent's head." Of course, I understand the explanations as to why agents can't give personalized rejections to everyone, but that just means that when I get a rejection, it's impossible to tell whether the reason was...
a) my query letter sucked,
b) the agent didn't like my first few pages (if they were attached), or
c) the agent just didn't like the premise/genre combination (whether as a personal preference or because they believe it's not marketable).
And the problem with revising a query letter only after getting a number of rejections means that you'll more likely than not have to burn a bunch of agents before figuring out something is wrong. By now, I've burned through the agents who explicitly said they were open to LGBTQ characters and science fiction, and so if I decide to continue querying, I'll have to query agents who rep general science fiction.
I know this isn't necessarily true, but it's hard not to think to myself, "If the agents who are actively looking for LGBTQ stories have rejected my book, without even asking for a partial, what chance do I have of being represented by other agents?"
And I've noticed that I've started to doubt my own work, which is not a good thing at all.
My plan at this point is to submit directly to an indie queer press ASAP, since I'm not really going to have time/spoons to go through more querying and agent rejections at this point in time, and I don't really want to sit on my manuscript for five more months. (I was going to get it done before I went back to school, but my schedule was thrown out of wack these past few days.) In case that press rejects me, though (which would make me very sad), I'll go back to querying. If I literally exhaust every agent I can find, my last choices are submit to Ninestar Press > submit to Dreamspinner Press > self-publish.
As a fledging author who's new to the whole trying-to-get-published process, one thing that I've found to be frustrating about the querying process is that rejections often feel like a game of "guess what's going on in an agent's head." Of course, I understand the explanations as to why agents can't give personalized rejections to everyone, but that just means that when I get a rejection, it's impossible to tell whether the reason was...
a) my query letter sucked,
b) the agent didn't like my first few pages (if they were attached), or
c) the agent just didn't like the premise/genre combination (whether as a personal preference or because they believe it's not marketable).
And the problem with revising a query letter only after getting a number of rejections means that you'll more likely than not have to burn a bunch of agents before figuring out something is wrong. By now, I've burned through the agents who explicitly said they were open to LGBTQ characters and science fiction, and so if I decide to continue querying, I'll have to query agents who rep general science fiction.
I know this isn't necessarily true, but it's hard not to think to myself, "If the agents who are actively looking for LGBTQ stories have rejected my book, without even asking for a partial, what chance do I have of being represented by other agents?"
And I've noticed that I've started to doubt my own work, which is not a good thing at all.
My plan at this point is to submit directly to an indie queer press ASAP, since I'm not really going to have time/spoons to go through more querying and agent rejections at this point in time, and I don't really want to sit on my manuscript for five more months. (I was going to get it done before I went back to school, but my schedule was thrown out of wack these past few days.) In case that press rejects me, though (which would make me very sad), I'll go back to querying. If I literally exhaust every agent I can find, my last choices are submit to Ninestar Press > submit to Dreamspinner Press > self-publish.
