I have about 30 submissions out and 14 rejections so far. The rejection rate is probably higher than that because many agents will only respond to a query if they're interested in seeing the manuscript. As a policy I find that rather impolite to the writer, but then again, I'm not being pelted each week with several hundred queries that most agents receive. Frankly, I see agenting as a pretty thankless job, whether it's in real estate, acting, or books.
Book agents are inundated with proposals and that's only part of the job. They're also dealing with editors, publishers, marketing people, lawyers and that just seems like layers of headaches to me. Then there's the rejection thing--when their authors get rejected, the agent herself is being rejected. I assume if an agent is rejected by an editor often enough, that editor may think twice about reviewing the agent's future submissions. Too much pressure! My guess is a person goes into agenting for the jackpot potential and the thrill of turning an unknown writer into a superstar. I will never begrudge an agent his or her 15%.
So what am I doing now? I keep refining my opening chapter and query letter. I recently took a Writer's Digest course that included a query letter workshop and an evaluation of my query letter by a professional agent. I made some substantial changes on my draft based on the workshop and am awaiting the agent's critique.
At the end of the month I'll send out another batch of queries. If results don't improve by the beginning of next year, I'll engage a resource to analyze my query and first chapter to determine which elements need to be strengthen to improve my chances of landing an agent.
The bottom line may be that there is nothing wrong with my submission package. It could just be that I need to find the right pair of eyes to bond with my work. From what I've read, there's about a 1 in 100 chance that a query will generate an agent request to review a large sample of a book. And about a 1 in 400 chance that an agent may offer representation!
Given those odds, it's reasonable to call this a silly waste of time. But, heck, I'm retired--what else would I be doing with my time?
An author's step-by-step experience, from perfecting his manuscript and finding an agent to landing a publisher and promoting his book.
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