Rejection Rate Staggering

I have a theory. I believe no agent ever rejects a really good query that makes a novel sound like the writer is the new big thing. I believe editors are the same way.

Not that I see really good queries very often. I can pull a hundred queries out of a stack, and bet that not one of them is really good, really new, really different, and filled with truly exciting, energetic writing. They all read like someone wrote a query, photocopied it, and handed it out to a hundred writers with instructions to change character names and location of story. They all read like they received teh same advice from someone who saw somewhere that writer X used this query to sell a novel, so you should use it, too.

It's same old, same old, same old, same old query after query after query. They're filled with bland writing, tell me what the plot is, tell me who the characters are, and tell me everything else. Every writer is told to show, don't tell, but this apparently doesn't count with query letters.

There;s just nothing original in the query. Originality , in fact, is limited to what the writer hopes is an original plot. The query does not show me how well the writer can write, it does not show me how original the writer is, and it dos not show me any reason why the novel will be better than the query letter.

If that is true, then plenty of books have sold despite not having "really good queries." Mine, for instance, which had its share of agent rejections (many based on pages as well as query).

OK, so I would never claim to be the "new big thing," making my story irrelevant. But Red Scylla's amazing story seems like an example to the contrary.

That said, I still think people should work damn hard on their queries and pages and listen to feedback from those who know the genre. You'll still be rejected, but you may not always be rejected if you're willing to listen and learn and experiment.

With my first MS, I had zero full requests. Zero. I queried a sick number of agents and received only three partials. I did my best with revising the MS, then I put it away and wrote something new.

With this second MS, so far I've received seven full requests from ~45 queries. I don't know if anything will come of the requests--I already received two rejections--but it feels like progress!

Revise your old MS, then put it away and write something new!

Wishing you the best.