Request rates on query letters

[donut]

What's a good ratio of rejection to request for a query letter?

After a good deal of painful rewriting and reworking, I think my novel is ready to go out again. I have a query letter (posted here (http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=82212)) that I've sent out previously -- between 2/07 and 10/07, I sent it out to 23 agents and got positive replies (requests for partials or fulls) from 9 of those. So... that puts me at about a 40% success rate (for the query -- the ms is another problem).

My question: should I rework the query for this pass, or is this success rate about as good as I'm likely to get?

Thanks for any and all opinions/experience.

[jclarkdawe]

I think 40% is a good result on a query. I doubt that working on it more will significantly increase that percentage. I'd be looking at what's not clicking with the partials and the full. Have you posted the opening on SYW? If not, that's what I'd think about doing.

Are you getting comments? Those might give you some hints.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

[Shady Lane]

Forty sounds pretty good to me.

I had one query letter where I sent out 5, and 4 came back with requests. I was flying high.

Until I sent out more queries...turns out I'd just been lucky.

[David I]

What's a good ratio of rejection to request for a query letter?

After a good deal of painful rewriting and reworking, I think my novel is ready to go out again. I have a query letter (posted here (http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=82212)) that I've sent out previously -- between 2/07 and 10/07, I sent it out to 23 agents and got positive replies (requests for partials or fulls) from 9 of those. So... that puts me at about a 40% success rate (for the query -- the ms is another problem).

My question: should I rework the query for this pass, or is this success rate about as good as I'm likely to get?

Thanks for any and all opinions/experience.

Well, let me start by saying that I'm predisposed to agents who take sample pages, or even those who take the first three chapters/first 50 pages, so my sample of those who are query only--which seems to be the audience you are aiming at--is skewed. That is, when I was in agent-getting mode, the majority of queries I sent out included partials. I don't know who all these query-only agents are or what their motivations are, but good fiction writing is obviously pretty damn low on their priority list, so they are low on my list.

Oops. Sorry. Ranting.

In any case, it varies by category and how many book they publish in your genre. Based on the folks I know, I'd say you'd be batting low in Romance, and high in a lot of other areas. So chances are, you're doing pretty well. Congrats.

My philosophy, for what it's worth:

If they don't specify "query-only," send pages. That assumes that your pages are really good. If your pages aren't good, then please don't query at all. Go write better pages.

Sounds like you're off to a great start. But if people take pages initially, send them--it saves a whole step, and rewards agents who actually care about writing.

[donut]

Jim -- Yup, I've gotten loads of comments, mostly pretty positive. Most people seem to dig the beginning, so that's not my problem. As for the rest, I've reworked and rewritten and edited until I'm blue in the face, and just gave my final chapter a major overhaul, which is why I think I'm ready to submit again.

Shady -- yeah, same thing happened to me. I sent out this query to seven agents, and immediately got requests from five of them, so I thought I was pretty much King Awesome. Then I sent a few more and got a few rejections and a lot of "no response"... but also some more requests, so I think my ratio is still pretty good, if not stellar.

[David I]

I think 40% is a good result on a query. I doubt that working on it more will significantly increase that percentage. I'd be looking at what's not clicking with the partials and the full. Have you posted the opening on SYW? If not, that's what I'd think about doing.

Are you getting comments? Those might give you some hints.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

Actually, I don't think it's clear that something isn't clicking--unless I read it wrong, it doesn't sound like there's been any real responses yet after the partials.

[Horseshoes]

Good rate. Haven't read your q but it's gotta be fine for that rate. I think my second time around, I had less than 30% request, about 60% of those asking for the full and I was happy with that rate (it got me Big Deal ag in about 4 months).

David's right--send pages (first 5) with *any* query.

[donut]

Oops -- I should clarify: whenever possible, I did send the first few pages along with my query. So the response rate I'm getting isn't to the query alone, by and large -- I also have a pretty good response to my opening. And I have had a partial that turned into a full, so I don't think my writing is *complete* garbage.

And further clarification: as you can see from my sig, nearly all of the fulls/partials I had out have turned into eventual rejections. Most of those rejections were pretty complimentary, but... still rejections. Two people haven't replied yet, and one has asked for revisions.

I only ever got two requests for partials, one of which was rejected, the other turned into a full, and then turned into a request for revisions.

In conclusion: yes, there were problems with the ms, but I worked on those problems, and that's why I'm resubmitting. Obviously you guys can't comment on how good my MS is, which is why I only asked about the query.

[David I]

1) Good on you for sending pages.

2) I think you're doing pretty well.

3) When it rains it pours.

[TrishD]

I queried 20 agents and received six requests for partials/fulls, which I thought was pretty good, so your 40% is nothing to shake a stick at.

[Gillhoughly]

If you're a fantastic writer, it's one-to-one.

But please, don't keep track of numbers like that, your head will explode.

You just keep sending out until the work clicks with someone.

Over a two year period--with constant rewrites--I sent countless queries for an equal number of rejections. The first agent who looked at it (and rejected it) later became a scammer with Edit Ink. The first publisher who liked it went backrupt before I could send the full MS.

But the next time out (and I was thoroughly discouraged by then) it sold.

That made up for everything.

Keep writing, keep tweaking. Make sure the first chapter will distract a slush pile reader from a subway full of muggers. Do that and you'll have a sale.

Good luck! ;)