And maybe it's the promise of a Heaven that keeps us going?
For me, it's more like a rumor, but I am a stupid optimist.
But, when you're subbing, literally every single sub story seems to be, 'I wrote my book and, then, in 24 hours, I had 6 agents begging to represent me in my inbox. 2 weeks later, I had a two-book deal from one of the Big Five!'
It doesn't even seem like an exaggeration, either.
(Getting no response on fulls is so upsetting. I've never had a form on a full yet - though I have had the generic 'couldn't connect with the characters', which could just as easily be a form. Such is life, but I think it's incredibly rude to never respond. So much worse than just sending the boilerplate. You got too busy and couldn't be bothered to read it? Fine. You really hated it? No problem. Buuuuut I think to not even send a form is really bad practice. I also hate no-response-means-no, because I'm an eternal spam-filter optimist, but that's different because I understand that they have thousands of queries every week, on top of clients and requested MSs. It's not practical for many of them to respond.
Like, my two top choice agents had fulls from me in January and March of last year and, though both responded to nudges in autumn, I've still not heard back from my other tentative ones. I probably won't. I'm also considering whether I'd even query them for my next project. I mean, obviously I WILL, because they have amazing sale records and I'm weak and hopeful as all hell, but I did lose respect for them. Boilerplate/very short rejections on fulls sting, but to drop off the map and not respond entirely is where it moves, to me, from being hurtful but 'oh well' to professional courtesy.
Now I think perhaps I sound psycho. So let's move onto the subject on which I can be a little more rational, and this thread has somewhat moved into.
I am always super-careful with nudging, and I always would be. I was about to write that it's somewhat unfair that there's such a power imbalance in publishing, when, really, the agent/author relationship is entirely two-way and symbiotic. I have friends who have been really mistreated even by star agents who rep their work. So sometimes I feel sad for them that there's no acceptable channel for them to say, 'this person shit on me,' and that the author's endless quote for their previous agent(s) always has to be, 'We have endless respect for each other and I love them and you should query them!'
But, at the same time, there have to be professional boundaries. It sounds like the simplest advice in the world but it has really shocked me, since I got into trying to break into publishing, how many authors were just...crazies who couldn't respect the basic principle of, 'would you talk to people you actually knew like this? Would you talk to potential employers/employees/however you want to see your agent?' Many agents have tweeted regularly and recently about being sent the same query three times in one day, being subjected to horrible abusive rants, being belittled and threatened. I think because, so much of writing is about you alone, there are just too many authors who believe that they are 'entitled' to be published because 'it's their dream.' And that gives them, in their minds, carte blanche to spew vitriol at anyone who says no. If that's just what gets tweeted/spoken about, can you believe how frequent that is? You hopefully wouldn't treat an office job like that, in the same way that you wouldn't get on the phone and start yelling at your business partner if they didn't reply - people, please! So, agents, to me, have the right to behave as they wish because, just like I wouldn't want my agent to be constantly haranguing me about my new book and threatening to withdraw rep, it's a decision that they need to make. If they were actually abusive to the author, that'd be a whole other matter.