Greetings.
If this question has already been asked and answered, please forgive the repetition. (I did a quick search but came up with nothing substantial.)
Four years ago I finished writing a book and sent out over 100 queries, after carefully screening the recipients and in most cases adjusting my query to conform to each agent's guidelines. From that first cast (with 100+ hooks!) I received 8 strikes (big fish that took the hook and ran, i.e., “Great idea, send us the full!”) and about twenty bites and nibbles (“Interesting. Send us a couple chapters/outline/proposal…”).
In the end I didn’t land an agent, but I did get some replies that gave me reason to keep trying my luck. The most encouraging response came from two different agents, one on the West Coast, one in NY (both of whom have been featured in this forum), who both asked assistants to read the entire ms. and get back to them (and eventually me) with a critique. One of the assistants was an intern, the other was a recently hired junior member of the staff. Both liked the book, and recommended to their bosses that they take me on. Neither did, citing the low likelihood of getting the kind of book I had written published in today’s market.
I guess I should add that my book is a memoir, and, to quote another agent who nibbled and spat out the bait, “Nobody these days is going to publish a memoir by a nobody.”
That having been said, and grudgingly acknowledged, I went on to do some serious revision, cutting about 100 pages (the book is now down to about 320pp.---92k words) and resumed sending out queries in which my book has become a work of narrative nonfiction (soon a “valuable historical document”), and I point out that even if it’s written by a nobody, it features more than just walk-on parts by several significant Somebodies.
The response to these later queries, sent out over the last two years, has been less and less encouraging. Nowadays I rarely even get a response. It’s as if noboby’s home, or no one’s picking up the phone. And I’m wondering, do they have Caller-ID?
So my question is this: Do agents have some sort of grapevine or secret data-base they share among themselves, or maybe even a blacklist, saying “Don’t bother with this guy,” or “This project’s not worth wasting your time on”?
In a way it’s understandable, given the increasing numbers of manuscripts written by graduates of writing programs and the shrinking numbers of people willing or able to read them---not to mention the miserable market for memoirs.
But it would be nice to know.
If this question has already been asked and answered, please forgive the repetition. (I did a quick search but came up with nothing substantial.)
Four years ago I finished writing a book and sent out over 100 queries, after carefully screening the recipients and in most cases adjusting my query to conform to each agent's guidelines. From that first cast (with 100+ hooks!) I received 8 strikes (big fish that took the hook and ran, i.e., “Great idea, send us the full!”) and about twenty bites and nibbles (“Interesting. Send us a couple chapters/outline/proposal…”).
In the end I didn’t land an agent, but I did get some replies that gave me reason to keep trying my luck. The most encouraging response came from two different agents, one on the West Coast, one in NY (both of whom have been featured in this forum), who both asked assistants to read the entire ms. and get back to them (and eventually me) with a critique. One of the assistants was an intern, the other was a recently hired junior member of the staff. Both liked the book, and recommended to their bosses that they take me on. Neither did, citing the low likelihood of getting the kind of book I had written published in today’s market.
I guess I should add that my book is a memoir, and, to quote another agent who nibbled and spat out the bait, “Nobody these days is going to publish a memoir by a nobody.”
That having been said, and grudgingly acknowledged, I went on to do some serious revision, cutting about 100 pages (the book is now down to about 320pp.---92k words) and resumed sending out queries in which my book has become a work of narrative nonfiction (soon a “valuable historical document”), and I point out that even if it’s written by a nobody, it features more than just walk-on parts by several significant Somebodies.
The response to these later queries, sent out over the last two years, has been less and less encouraging. Nowadays I rarely even get a response. It’s as if noboby’s home, or no one’s picking up the phone. And I’m wondering, do they have Caller-ID?
So my question is this: Do agents have some sort of grapevine or secret data-base they share among themselves, or maybe even a blacklist, saying “Don’t bother with this guy,” or “This project’s not worth wasting your time on”?
In a way it’s understandable, given the increasing numbers of manuscripts written by graduates of writing programs and the shrinking numbers of people willing or able to read them---not to mention the miserable market for memoirs.
But it would be nice to know.
