At the end of last week, I gave Webook.com a try. So what are the results at the beginning of the following week?
No different than anything I've seen with a do-it-yourself approach. But there's more data for my amusement.
To my surprise, the agents read the material in record time. No waiting for weeks, trying to determine if enough time had passed to yield a "no response is no" rejection. From my submission chart, I could see that real action was taken.
Elyse Cheney read the submission right away, but she only looked at the bio, brief synopsis and query before giving up on it. Didn't bother with the writing sample, so I can assume that the query didn't float her literary boat.
An agent with Levine Greenberg was quick, looking over the brief synopsis and manuscript sample before clicking on the reject button. Didn't even bother with the query. The last couple of submissions I sent to them via the form on the website never got any kind of reply, so I'm ahead on that count.
Another submission was read but not responded to, so even with the convenience of WEbook, no response probably means no.
And, of course, one submission has been ignored so far. Who knows, maybe within the next few weeks something will happen, but I won't hold my breath.
Still no requests for more material, but I know for sure that what I sent was acknowledged, which is more than you'd get from a standard e-mail submission that often doesn't get answered.
Using a go-between has provided some new information that I couldn't get otherwise. Other than that, it doesn't make any difference.
Even so, it's amusing to see what parts of the submission different agents read and how soon they get to the submissions and all that. And who can complain about free entertainment?
4 comments:
This is interesting. (As you can see I'm reading your posts backwards. Oh, well. California...)
Not that I plan to re-enter the game (today I got a reject from Marcy Posner for an email submittal I totally forgot... again. She was nice to answer at all, I'm not sure if it was a form reject. Her previous emails to me sounded different.) But I am curious.
I once received a rejection from her in which she recalled rejecting another one of my novels the year before.
Either she's got a fantastic memory or an intricate filing system.
The WEbook stuff has been entertaining, but I'm still sending out my own. It's all the same, isn't it, still trying to sell a book to an agent in a market that's tight.
And getting tighter and all puckered up.
My experience Posner has been refreshing, even though it resulted in rejects. For the query before this last one, she eventually asked for the full ms. Got rejected at the end, but I could tell that, although she didn't pick it up, she respected the work.
I kind of lost track of what I sent her... I think this was the the third novel. I think... ***rolls eyes***
It takes time to learn the craft of novel writing. No surprise that you're up to the third, and getting some attention from an agent.
How can you give up now, when you're getting closer to success?
My last rejection suggested I try small publishers directly because what I wrote wasn't the sort of thing that a big publisher would take on (translates to: not a big blockbuster). So I sent it off and now I'm waiting to hear back.
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