Many agents accept e-mail queries, which saves the author on paper and postage. The drawback is the non-answer, the lack of a reply that closes out the submission. Looking for closure, I checked my history with some agents who previously responded to e-mails (with a form letter rejection, I might add).
Steve Axelrod used to respond, back in 2003 and 2004. Fast forward two years, and he doesn't reply if he's not interested. Debra Goldstein at The Creative Culture used to answer her queries, but what held last year is not the case this year. Over at Imprint Agency, you could get a rejection, but that has stopped. I have tried John Talbot and Gail Fortune again, having queried them two years ago on another manuscript, but they no longer answer.
Which leads us back to the e-query and its cheap ease. Anyone can fire off a letter, especially when it costs nothing to send. And so the barrage is created, as hopeful writers submit their missives with the touch of a button. The agents are then swamped with queries, hundreds per week, and there comes a time when they cannot begin to answer them all, even with a blanket rejection.
Given a certain period of time to answer the e-mail, what agent is going to put in the extra hours on top of already long hours to cut, paste and send? Read the first lines, see if the hook is a grabber, and then hit delete. Just as the e-query is all speed and efficiency, so too is the non-response, the unstated not for us.
1 comment:
Without a platform to stand on, my response rate is around 10%. I'd say that 30% is very good for fiction with a history of previous publications.
Best of luck to you.
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