In the first two weeks of this month, I went on a tear and sent out 30 query letters. And today, I got my 15th rejection letter. So I am at 50 percent.
Normally, I get about 50 percent replies, so I suspect I probably won't hear from any more agents unless I send follow-up letters to agents I didn't hear from. I generally only send a follow-up if the agent is on my A-list. And come to think of it, I don't think I have ever gotten a reply from a follow-up e-mail.
(I am a little loopy today because I went to the dentist this morning and had two teeth extracted. The numbness is gone but I'm on painkillers and am having a little trouble with focus. So that's my excuse for poor writing today. I will have to think of another excuse for all the other days.)
Ten days ago, I was talking to an editor at Writer's Digest who said it is a mistake to send out more than a handful of queries at a time. If all of them are rejected, you know it is the query that is the problem. You won't have wasted a lot of time and you know to work on the letter.
He said I should take a step-by-step approach. Get past the query stage, then the partial stage, then the ms stage. By then, I should have an agent.
An online friend who is very good at query letters -- she's my own Obi-Wan Kenobi -- re-wrote my letter this morning and sent it back to me. She also suggested only sending out seven at a time. So that is my strategy at the moment. Seven-at-a-time. But this time, I am going to start with only my A- and B-list agents and see what happens.
Well, my meds are really kicking in at the moment so I will go before I forget how to spell my name. (It' Michael, by the way.) Since I didn't work today and I have a large freelance project in the works, I will be very busy for the time being. Not sure when the next batch of query letters will go out. But perhaps I will get a few requests for partials before I hit the 50 percent rejection mark again.
Thanks for reading, especially you folks in Russia this month. Now get back to writing.
3 comments:
All that about how many queries to send out was coming in next week's part of the query series I'm doing on the blog.
And please don't send any replies to agents after they've rejected your query. If they offer you advice or give feedback, yes, it doesn't hurt to send a thank you email. But if you're just wondering if after 3 months they've read it, yeah, don't do that. Most times if they haven't gotten to it, and you prompt them to look at it, they'll reject it just b/c you wondered. Agents can be like that. Ask me I know.
Remember I'm Obi-Wan. I know everything.
Hope you're feeling better too.
Hang in there, Michael.
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