The Deafening Silence of an Agent's Non-Response

I belong to a writing group whose members have set receiving 100 rejections as a goal for the year 2020. The rejections can be for poetry, short stories, fiction or non-fiction books, essays or articles. The obvious thought behind this goal is to acknowledge that writing is a rejection-intense labor of love and the importance to keep plugging away even when the market responds unkindly.

The problem with this goal is that you don't always know when your work is being rejected. For example, of the more than 60 queries that I've sent out for my novel, COME THE HARPIES, I've received less than 20 rejections. Does that mean that more than 40 agents are still considering taking me on as a client?

The answer is no.

The reason is that many agents say that they are so inundated with queries that they don't have the time to respond unless they're interested in reading more of an author's manuscript. Keep in mind that most submissions are done by email and that it takes all of about 10 seconds to hit "Reply" to an email and add a brief message like "Sorry, not for me." One can construe this non-response policy from agents as a lack of empathy or just plain arrogance.

I don't like it much because, like all authors, I track my submissions and hate to be left dangling with non-responses. But I tend to cut agents some of slack in this regard because I absolutely believe that in the age of electronic submissions, agents do get overwhelmed with queries simply because it is so cheap and easy to submit.

Years ago, before email, everything was done via the postal system and writers had to make a real commitment to submit. Between queries and manuscripts, I spent a small fortune in paper and postage when I tried getting one of my books published back in the 1990's. While book agents have always had a heavy load of submissions to wade through, the advent of electronic submissions (and MFA programs!) has made that workload many times larger.

Still, my sympathy for the agent community goes only so far. If an agent doesn't have 10 seconds to respond to a query, perhaps they're over-extended and should stop accepting queries for a period until they can catch up with their backlog. I don't know about other writers, but I spend hours researching appropriate agents and customizing queries for my particular book. At the very least I would appreciate the recipient of my query to spend a few seconds on a response.

Until then, I don't know if I've had 19 or 40 rejections for my novel. So how will I know when I've reached 100 rejections for the year?