It\u2019s become common for literary agents to use a \u2018no response means no\u2019 policy in which they only reply to queries that interest them and no longer send out rejections in response to all the other queries they receive.\u00a0 (So if you\u2019re one of those writers who aspires to wallpaper a room with rejection slips, you\u2019re really out of luck now — even with the switch to email over snail mail you could still print them and stick them on the wall, but if you don\u2019t even get anything back . . .\u00a0 Well, let\u2019s just say you\u2019ll have to find something else to decorate that room with.) \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n
The serious issue, of course, is that most writers find this lack of response adds to their stress level for a number of obvious reasons.\u00a0 It can make you feel as if you\u2019re sending your carefully prepared submissions out into a void, and you can\u2019t necessarily be certain that your query was rejected; there are always cases where someone receives a request for materials six months or more after they queried.\u00a0 (Heck, there\u2019ve even been cases where someone got a request after so much time that the manuscript had already been picked up by another agent and published!)\u00a0 So it makes it harder to get a sense of where you are in the process and how many of your queries are truly outstanding versus those that have probably<\/em> been rejected.\u00a0 (But maybe not.)\u00a0 And unless the agent has an online submission form that confirms receipt, there\u2019s also that nagging question of whether one\u2019s query might have been lost or gotten trapped in an overzealous spam filter.<\/p>\n I\u2019m pretty sure most writers really don\u2019t like this policy — and would choose a definite rejection over uncertainty — but I\u2019ve noticed that when the subject comes up, many people insist that it\u2019s perfectly reasonable, and are quick to point out that of course all good literary agents must devote most of their time to their clients, while they don\u2019t owe queriers anything at all.\u00a0 Although those things are very true, I don\u2019t believe \u2018no response means no\u2019 is a necessary evil we should blithely accept.\u00a0 Furthermore, all the emphasis on the need to be thick-skinned shouldn\u2019t stop us from being sympathetic to writers who find the process exasperating.\u00a0 Neither should we refrain from engaging in conversations about whether there might actually be ways to improve<\/em> the situation.\u00a0 So while it\u2019s not my aim to ruffle any feathers, and I won\u2019t say that \u2018non-respondence\u2019 is necessarily a sloppy or un<\/em>professional practice (as some people will suggest), I will say that I think there are other ways to manage the situation that are more<\/em> professional as well as more considerate.<\/p>\n Frankly I haven’t seen compelling evidence that supports the idea that ‘no reply means no’ is the only practical and efficient method for agents to handle lots of queries.\u00a0 To begin with, there’s the hard-to-miss fact that there are some very popular agents (i.e. ones who definitely receive a high number of queries) who do consistently send replies (even if they’re mostly brief forms), and some of those agents are also very rapid responders.\u00a0 One argument that I just came across is that if an agent takes ‘a minute’ to reply to a query, responding to a hundred and twenty queries would take them two hours. \u00a0\u00a0But this calculation is based on an honest mistake. \u00a0We often say ‘one minute’ without meaning it literally, but\u00a0 it really doesn’t take sixty seconds to read a query, much less to send an email reply — it can take as little as ten or fifteen seconds.<\/p>\n Out of curiosity, I did an experiment and pretended to be an ‘old-fashioned’ agent handling snail mail queries.\u00a0 I timed it, and determined that if I were one of those agents who would write a quick note on the query itself and send it back (a bit off-putting, perhaps, but there certainly were — and probably still are — some agents who would do that to save both time and stationary), I could take an envelope from the inbox, slit it with a\u00a0letter opener, pull out query and SASE, read the entire query, scrawl ‘Not for me, thanks’ at the bottom of it, put it into the author’s SASE, and drop the sealed envelope into the outgoing mail pile within thirty seconds.\u00a0 And if the query were an obvious dud so I didn’t get more than halfway through the second paragraph before I stopped reading (and theoretically that’s true of eighty percent of any slush pile), I could do it in twenty seconds.<\/p>\n Doing this via email and avoiding the physical paper shuffling clearly makes it even faster.\u00a0 My sister has worked as an executive assistant for many years and learned to deal with a staggering volume of emails every day.\u00a0 I know from what she\u2019s told me that there are tools for managing email to make it more efficient.\u00a0 So if you set it up properly, with just a couple of clicks of the mouse you should be able to send a form reply\u00a0(and I believe it’s possible to make a choice between several different forms as you do this).<\/p>\n [ETA: After I wrote this, I discovered this post by Janet Reid <\/a>from a few years back.\u00a0 Being an agent herself, she can be blunt about why she feels there’s no excuse for not replying to queries.\u00a0 And she\u00a0confirms\u00a0what my sister said about email — that it can easily be set up so\u00a0you can\u00a0select from several standard replies — and says that it only takes her\u00a0three seconds.\u00a0\u00a0(And, not surprisingly,\u00a0it turns out that\u00a0Ms. Reid also<\/em> follows a\u00a0practice\u00a0similar to\u00a0Ginger Clark’s\u00a0by reporting how far along she is in queries, which I talk about below.) \ud83d\ude42 ]<\/p>\n Now of course agents aren\u2019t always going to rush through reading queries; no doubt some take a break from dealing with contracts and such by perusing queries at a fairly leisurely pace, rather than getting them out of the way as quickly as they can.\u00a0 But for the sake of argument, let\u2019s say it\u2019s reasonable to assume that an agent we query is going to grant us thirty seconds of their precious time (especially after all the time and effort that went into writing that query!).\u00a0 So why would anyone say it’s unreasonable to expect that agent to take another three seconds to send back a response?\u00a0 (Granted, there’s the issue of those unpleasant characters who do their best to spoil everything for the writers who are polite and professional by reacting badly to form rejections, but who’s to say they won’t react badly to being ignored as well?)\u00a0 [Janet Reid also dismisses this excuse in her post.]<\/p>\n Secondly, if an agent is flexible and creative, there are other ways of communicating with queriers even if they\u2019re still determined not to send rejections.\u00a0 One of the things that frustrates writers is not knowing when to \u2018close\u2019 a query and count it as a rejection.\u00a0 Some agents mention an average response time on their website, but plenty of others say nothing about it.\u00a0 So the speculation begins: four weeks? six? eight?\u00a0 What if the agent is out of the country or taking personal leave?\u00a0 How does the time of year, the holidays, the weather, etc., affect the response time?\u00a0 But there\u2019s actually a very easy fix that eliminates all of that guesswork.<\/p>\n Although agent Ginger Clark doesn\u2019t send any kind of reply unless she’s interested in a query, she utilizes a system where she regularly posts on Twitter to say that she\u2019s read all the queries she’s received through a specific date and time.\u00a0 Now I don\u2019t know if there are many other agents who do this as well — it\u2019s not exactly rocket science to figure out that it\u00a0makes good sense — but considering that the vast majority of agents today seem to use Twitter regularly, you\u2019d think there\u2019d be plenty of them doing it.\u00a0 But if there were, I\u2019m also pretty sure that everyone would be talking about it rather than speculating on response times. \u00a0In addition, while Ms. Clark often travels to conferences and such so she can’t necessarily say she will always get through queries within a certain time period, her method completely removes that problem.<\/p>\n Now I don\u2019t go stalking agents on Twitter or anywhere else, and I can assure you that I\u2019m not giving Ms. Clark a plug because she\u2019s one of Le Guin\u2019s agents.\u00a0 The significant thing is that her being on my list (naturally) means I\u2019ve researched her, which included browsing her Twitter account, and that\u2019s how I learned of her query reporting technique.\u00a0 And this brings me to one of my big pet peeves, and something that contributes to the overload of queries that agents receive: writers who query without doing thorough research on all the agents on their list.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s say you\u2019ve written a GoT style epic fantasy intended for an adult audience.\u00a0 If you hop on Query Tracker or Agent Query or any other online database that lists literary agents, and search for ones who rep fantasy, a list of over a hundred agents pops up.\u00a0 And you think, \u2018Wow!\u00a0 Look at all the agents I get to query.\u2019\u00a0 Not so fast.\u00a0 Fifty of those agents may be on that list because they handle YA and\/or MG fantasy, but not adult fantasy.\u00a0 Or it might be something of a mystery why they\u2019re even on the list at all — it\u2019s possible they mostly rep Romance and don\u2019t work with straight up speculative fiction, but if they marked on some questionnaire that they\u2019re open to paranormal elements in Romance, that might make them show up on the list of agents who rep fantasy.<\/p>\n So how do you know?\u00a0 You go to each agent\u2019s website and read it carefully to see what they\u2019re looking for.\u00a0 If they have one, you also visit their blog page, peruse their Twitter feed, and try to find at least one interview with them.\u00a0 \u00a0Yes, it takes time, but why would you want to bother a busy person who\u2019s trying to do their job in order to show them something they have specifically said (in a public source that everyone has access to) that they don\u2019t want to see?\u00a0 Maybe you have a MG fantasy about trolls, and in a brief interview on some author\u2019s blog you discover that Agent X despises trolls — well, you can scratch her off the list for that manuscript.\u00a0 I would think all this is common sense, but evidently it isn\u2019t.\u00a0 And, sadly, those who don\u2019t go through this process are essentially helping to gum up the works for everyone else.<\/p>\n I admire agents very much not only for managing all the unpleasant contractual and legal aspects of\u00a0 publishing (though I\u2019ve studied business law I despise\u2019 legalese\u2019), but also just for continuing to read all those queries.\u00a0 In the long process of learning everything I can about how to write an effective query and trying to help others by critiquing their queries, there are times when I\u2019ve felt absolutely sick of looking at queries, and found that they all started to sound alike . . .\u00a0 To be honest, I\u2019m not sure how agents do it.\u00a0 Last year I became one of the owners and editors of a new small press, and when we start taking submissions I\u2019m seriously considering telling authors that I don\u2019t want to see query letters, only a bare-bones cover letter and the first five or ten pages.<\/p>\n Since one of the reasons we started the press was seeing a need for publishers who don\u2019t emphasize content at the expense of style, we\u2019re looking for books in which the language itself is as important as the content.\u00a0 So naturally I\u2019ll be looking hardest at those pages, and if I like what I see, then<\/em> I can ask for a synopsis and find out if the story actually has a functional plot as well. \ud83d\ude09\u00a0 In any case, if the writing were functional but nothing special, the project wouldn\u2019t fit into our niche anyway, so there doesn\u2019t seem much point in torturing myself by reading query letters. \u00a0(And yes, I know — no matter how much we go on about how we\u2019re seeking books written in good old-fashioned lyrical language, some fool will send us a Lee Child style thriller, and I\u2019ll look at the opening paragraph and say, \u201cAnd why exactly did you submit to this press . . . ?\u2019)<\/p>\n One of the things that made me aware of how many people don\u2019t do their research is reading \u2018Ten Queries\u2019.\u00a0 An agent who regularly does that on Twitter is Margaret Bail, who I\u2019ve also researched because she was on my list.\u00a0 And it\u2019s mind-boggling how many queries she passes on because they\u2019re in a genre or age category she doesn\u2019t represent.\u00a0 (When they say \u2018query widely\u2019, that\u2019s not what they mean, folks!)\u00a0 For instance, she doesn\u2019t rep literary fiction, but for some inexplicable reason people still query her with literary novels.\u00a0 (And if you\u2019re reading this and you\u2019re one of those people, let me say this: Yes<\/em>, you\u2019re an idiot.\u00a0And please<\/em> don\u2019t do it again.)\u00a0 But what I learned from reading some of Ms. Bail\u2019s Ten Queries comments actually led me to take her off my list.\u00a0 And no, she didn\u2019t offend me in anyway — far from it.\u00a0 What she did was clearly communicate her tastes.\u00a0 And because I have the utmost respect for her and appreciate that she\u2019s taken the time to not only give us some insight into her thought process but also show us just what she is and isn\u2019t looking for, I\u2019m not going to waste her time or mine.<\/p>\n As Ms. Bail\u2019s \u2018Ten Queries\u2019 comments not only confirmed that she doesn\u2019t rep lit fic (among other things), I also saw that she passed on some genres that she does<\/em> rep because she said something about the style being too literary.\u00a0 After seeing that kind of comment for the third time, I knew I needed to drop her from my query list.\u00a0 While I\u2019ve always seen Margaret Atwood\u2019s work referred to as literary\/SF cross-over (perhaps because she objected to it being labeled science fiction?), Le Guin has always been considered an SF and fantasy writer (and has never objected to that, even thought she writes a very wide variety of things).\u00a0 But recently I\u2019ve seen Le Guin\u2019s classic SF novels also\u00a0described as cross-over between literary and SF.\u00a0 And if that\u2019s the case, I\u2019ve probably shot way past \u2018literary style\u2019 or \u2018literary bent\u2019 and all the way to cross-over as well.\u00a0 So although Ms. Bail certainly handles SF and fantasy and I write SF and fantasy, why would I query her with a book written in a style that she\u2019s made perfectly clear is just not her cup of tea?<\/p>\n I think it\u2019s pretty apparent that communication is the whole key here.\u00a0 That includes taking the time to put the communication out there and making the effort to read and understand the sources of communication that others have made available.\u00a0 So, for instance, if an agent wants to follow Ginger Clark\u2019s example and keep querying authors from being left in the dark, even without responding to most queries individually, all they\u2019d have to do is to add one little line on their website that lets authors know that they will post updates on Twitter (or\u00a0another social media site, or\u00a0perhaps the blog page of the website itself), and then every few weeks or so let everyone know where they are.\u00a0 (The more I think about this method the more I think it\u2019s a very obvious solution that should be widely imitated.)<\/p>\n Like everything else, the business of querying agents is an evolving process, and there’s a learning curve involved as agents figure out the best way to handle the changes.\u00a0 The transition to predominantly email queries has been pretty rapid, and it’s no surprise that it’s evidently increased the amount of queries they receive exponentially.\u00a0 (And with it taking so much less time, effort, and resources to send an email query vs. a snail mail query, no doubt it’s also increased the number of crazy folks who send out queries whether or not they’ve even written a book!)\u00a0 So I think it’s important to keep an open dialogue going about the process, and not just shrug and blindly accept the frustration as if there’s no possible alternative.\u00a0 Writers should feel welcome to take part in that dialogue, and no author should be shamed and told they’re whining or being unrealistic if they speak up to say that something doesn\u2019t seem right to them.\u00a0 Acceptance can also be a form of apathy, and there\u2019s no reason to give up on trying to make a tough process easier for everyone involved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s become common for literary agents to use a \u2018no response means no\u2019 policy in which they only reply to queries that interest them and no longer send out rejections in response to all the other queries they receive.\u00a0 (So … Continue reading