Several agents have adopted the "no response means no" style of reply.
That's fine, and we all understand how busy literary agents are these days. They have clients to tend, and it's those clients who pay the bills and are rightfully given top priority. With hundreds of query letter arriving every week, it's difficult to shoot out a reply to each and every one.
Here we sit, the authors in search of representation, wondering if our query letter was caught up in the spam filter. Never received. Should we send it again? Take it as a no and move on? What if this dream agent didn't read the perfect query that took weeks to compose?
I know that Donna Bagdasarian of Priot Entertainment Group got the query. After submitting, my inbox popped open with a confirmation that the agency had received the letter.
I know that Julie Barer has my query letter in her cache, since her assistant (I presume) sent me an e-mail a week after I submitted, to let me know that they had the material I'd sent them.
Whether or not Ms. Bagdasarian will have anything more to say remains to be seen, since she's just started her own agency and doesn't have a track record in regard to query policy. But at least she's acknowledged receipt, so I know that the letter I spent days personalizing will get a fair chance.
No reply means no? Yes, when we know that the query got to where it was supposed to go and a rejection can be tallied after four weeks of silence.
2 comments:
Had same experience. My clever computer told me that it was delivered. That's all. Then nothing.
I am at the anger stage. Not good. My old agent (the one I had to part ways) was peddling, or may be even sold it, a novel about a writer who with every rejection becomes more and more psychotic, until he (or she) actually started to knock off publishers and agents.
Myself, I like to point to Goebels.
I go from hope to despair and back again.
There's nothing more to be done than writing something else, with the chance that the plot you've created just might be something an agent could sell.
What makes it more frustrating is to see what does make it. I read the opening of a new novel that features vultures and vulture vomit in delightful detail. And someone got paid for writing such shite.
Post a Comment