Looking for new authors

[Ursa major]

I agree, Montero: that would be a useful feature.

Does anyone know whether their system does that or not?

 

[Scarfy]

Is three weeks an adequate length of time to assume you're not wanted? I ask this out of complete ignorance.

As far as I know, it varies. I've heard people throw around everything from 2 weeks to 6 weeks. An agent knows whether or not the manuscript is for them within the first few paragraphs and will discard anything they don't like.

A lot of agents receive 30 manuscripts or more per day, but can reject a single one in less than a minute. They might not even read the manuscript; they might read the synopsis and base their decision purely on that. I think that 3 weeks is enough to assume that you've not been successful.

 

[Montero]

I agree, Montero: that would be a useful feature.

Does anyone know whether their system does that or not?

Well, I tried writing "not" and was told the minimum message is 7 characters. So here is "not" with padding.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I think it's more a case that with manuscripts that don't have a chance (which would be most of them) an agent knows within a few paragraphs, but with the ones that might it takes much longer.

 

[Scarfy]

Six to eight weeks is probably a fair amount of time to wait, before assuming you've been unsuccessful, I think (if you've had no response).

 

[Venusian Broon]

Six to eight weeks is probably a fair amount of time to wait, before assuming you've been unsuccessful, I think (if you've had no response).

To cover yourself (and assuming said agent/publisher has stated they will not accept submissions that have been sent to multiple recipients and haven't stipulated a time period that you should expect to wait) would it be wise to put something like:

'...and if I haven't received a reply in X weeks/months I will assume that I have been unsuccessful and will then try other agents or publishers'

or something like that? Just a question.

Of course 'X' would have to be reasonably long - because we have no idea how busy they are (it would be stupid to give them 1 week to reply!!) - but at least this gives you a deadline you can fix before moving on down the list and getting on.

 

[psychotick]

Hi VB,

Wouldn't chucking in a line like that risk annoying the agency receiving the e-mail? Not that I can speak for these people, but if someone sent me an e-mail saying please respond within X weeks or I'll consider your response negative, I'd be a little anti the sender. I'd consider that he was making demands of me. And when it's someone essentially asking for my help, that might not go down so well for them.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Scarfy]

John Jarrold told me that agents are always looking for a reason to say no. So, a line like that might come across as a little pushy (as in, implying that you are giving them a written deadline). It's probably better to chase them up after 6 weeks, but I've come to realise that no response = no interest.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Hi VB,

Wouldn't chucking in a line like that risk annoying the agency receiving the e-mail? Not that I can speak for these people, but if someone sent me an e-mail saying please respond within X weeks or I'll consider your response negative, I'd be a little anti the sender. I'd consider that he was making demands of me. And when it's someone essentially asking for my help, that might not go down so well for them.

Cheers, Greg.

Well honestly I was thinking of many months not weeks (i.e. so that it probably would not be seen as a deadline) and hey, yes, they have a business to run but feck it so do we! And perhaps this is better than trying to chase up the query with more correspondence (that I don't know; but it appears they are stuffed with requests and manuscripts already, maybe that'll tip them over the edge into saying "NO", as this guy is another 'aggressive' wannabe...??)

One of the reasons perhaps they are cutting back on mailing back, and I've read it on Chons a few times, is that not only are they stowed under with work, but that sending out replies stirs up a lot more correspondence back. I assume from all the fruit loops asking 'Why on earth have you rejected my masterpiece', or 'Exactly why (in detail) is this manuscript wrong." And they are never going to answer these secondary messages at all.

However as for us asking for help, I disagree, it's mutual. Yes we want to be published or have an agent, but they also require new authors coming through somehow, otherwise they don't have an industry Sure the unknown authors have less (statistically) to offer and should expect less overall, but that two-way relationship is there.

I guess the 'pushy' angle so that any reason to reject one manuscript could be valid (although it depends how you word it). Probably best to go with an unsaid 2-3 months or so. Possibly if they word it so that they are very anti multiple submissions in their guide, then write (nicely of course) to them saying, "I have not heard anything in 3 months, so I've assumed that you have rejected it therefore I am now going to resubmit it to other groups."

Which in itself is actually quite pushy. But you can't be a doormat all your life and if you get a resounding 'thank you (but feck off)' just after that I'd say it was highly unlikely leaving it another few months was going to change the outcome.

The analogy with the job market is an interesting one, but maybe not quite the same - I'm quite aggressive and would rather contact the employers early (politely of course) get an early "no" than wait weeks and weeks hanging around, but some employers quite like potential employees taking an interest and actively seeking out results - an approach that would obviously fail in the book industry.

 

[Ursa major]

As I had said in a post that I then overwrote....

The company that tells you that it does not send out rejections must be implying that one can, after a relatively short period**, send to other agents/publishers.

Given this, why bother telling them something that they already know? There's no upside in doing so, and may (or may not) be a downside, as others have said.



** - Time that can be well spent tailoring your query latter/synopsis to the next lucky recipient of your submission.

 

[Venusian Broon]

The company that tells you that it does not send out rejections must be implying that one can, after a relatively short period, send to other agents/publishers.

Completely agree as you can clearly take that as an assumption, it's in the case that if you've gone through all the info and submission guides that you can get from the company and it's still not clear*, that you could potentially do that.

* Perhaps such cases do not exist. I haven't read submission guides in a while - too busy getting something ready to submit. Many, many moons to go.

 

[Mr Tagomi]

... but I've come to realise that no response = no interest.

Hi Scarfy

This is something that has bothered me for a long time. I don't think it's fair to be left hanging like that. It's a reasonable expectation to be let know where you stand.

I don't really buy the argument that it's too time-consuming to reply to all queries. You could easily set up a standard rejection reply that you send in a couple of clicks.

Most people who work in an office environment realise that you if you send an e-mail to someone about something, you need them to give you some sort of response.

Mind you, I do take the point about query responses leaving agents open to the possibility of unwanted dialogues with people they've rejected. The internet being what it is, it's probably a constant issue for them.

 

[Kylara]

Easy solution to that: non viewed inbox. Lots of companies have inboxes created for sending newsletters/standard "we have received your email" which they do not ever look it but delete the contents of regularly. They could send such rejection mails from that inbox with a disclaimer at the bottom "This is an unmanned mailbox, please do not respond to this email"
It's just polite to respond...

 

[Mr Tagomi]

Yeah, exactly.

Someone said earlier that it's a business for authors too, and that's exactly right. No matter how rubbish a submission may be, it deserves a response. The least a person is entitled to is the knowledge that their message was received. You can never take that for granted.

One gets the impression that this does not happen because the agent has something we want, whereas we don't really have something they want. Or only on a rare occasion anyway. There is a power imbalance.

I'm sure they get sick of the constant stream of non-viable stuff they get every day, but we're all sick of aspects of our work. That's no excuse really.

 

[Boneman]

Looking through my list of submissions, that I sent out over the last year, I see that (and yes I followed the guidelines to the letter) of 25 sent out I received:

3 partial requests (which lead to)
2 full requests and one excellent personal rejection
3 other Personal rejections (nice letter etc)
9 Standard rejection letters
10 Non-response

And I'd say the responses obviously more than made up for the non-responses, but why have a website that gives guidleines, saying 'we want to see your work' without a standard rejection button they can easily set up, for their first reader?

 

[Venusian Broon]

Looking through my list of submissions, that I sent out over the last year, I see that (and yes I followed the guidelines to the letter) of 25 sent out I received:

Hey Boneman, this is off-topic but an imp of a question has entered my brain and it needs to come out before it wrecks all the soft tissue in there.

How long did the process of sending out 25 submissions and receiving them back take? And I assume that you did all or most multiply? (Twenty five in sequence would take years surely....)

 

[Boneman]

Hey Boneman, this is off-topic but an imp of a question has entered my brain and it needs to come out before it wrecks all the soft tissue in there.

How long did the process of sending out 25 submissions and receiving them back take? And I assume that you did all or most multiply? (Twenty five in sequence would take years surely....)

I see that it took eleven months to send them all out: Like this:
10 in January - 5 non-reply, 3 standard rejections within 2 months and 2 partial requests within a month.
8 in July - 1 partial within three days(!) 2 personal rejections within six weeks, 4 standard rejections within three months 1 non-reply.
7 in November - 1 personal rejection within 2 months, 2 standard rejections within three months, 4 non-reply

I hope the maths is correct - I don't keep a flow chart just a log of when it's sent out, and then a red pen when it's rejected...

All in all there was 14 months between them (apart from non-replies, still waiting!)

 

[Venusian Broon]

All in all there was 14 months between them (apart from non-replies, still waiting!)

Cheers Boneman, it's good to know roughly what to expect in terms of how long replies generally take.

I did find a website years ago that had tallied rejection/success rates and had statistics on waiting times for reponses. It was for magazines and short story outlets only I think - but of course I can't remember it now. It may be hiding in a saved browser location somewhere on one of my machines...

 

[Mr Tagomi]

There was one called LitMatch, but it seems to be gone now.

 

[Mouse]

Sounds like Duotrope, VB.

Boneman, that's very impressive!