In short order, the first partial on manuscript 5 was rejected, and save for one agent, no one is pounding at the door, begging for a peek at the novel. Rather than face the blank page that is the current WIP, I revised the query letter and changed the title of #5 - can't re-query the same agency with old words, can I?
After a couple of days, there's been a nibble, but I have no confidence in the e-query and the downloaded submission. There's no money involved, and since you get what you pay for, there's no expectations. It seems that the literary agent should have some sense of obligation to really look at the partial manuscript, knowing that the destitute writer has paid out much needed cash for paper, ink, and stamps. But the freebie e-query - how can they take it seriously? Ah, maybe, worth a quick glance, like Amazon's 'Look Inside' feature translated to submissions.
Not grabbed in the first sentence, the first paragraph, the first page? Delete the whole mess or cut and paste in the standard rejection. Nothing lost but a few minutes of the agent's time. But that piece of paper, that's not to be ignored. It's there, right on the desk or lurking in the bin, a constant reminder of a real person at the other end. The literary agent has to hold it in their hands, touch it, come into contact with writerly DNA.
The fact that I e-mailed a new query and got a positive reply in a matter of hours surely means...that I happened to hit send around the same time that the agent was reading her e-mail. Nonetheless, I'll pretend that the newly revised query and catchy title were irresistible. And tomorrow I'll send off a batch of snail mail queries, just to be sure.
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