If I can wait to get some pro short story credits? This is my fourth book, but third novel, and I have submitted all of them to agents and at no point did any agent request to see chapters. Should I start the query process again or wait until I have some credits that would most likely make an agent request a partial? I have some minor paying credits but nothing that would catch the eye.
There is no doubt at all that having really good credits does help.
Top credits are often the deciding factor in whether an agent or editor reads your novel, and all things being equal, can be the reason an agent represents your novel, and the reason an editor buys it.
But the reason top credits help is because they're
incredibly difficult to get. It's actually much easier to sell a novel to a top publisher than it is to get credits from top magazines. The competition is not only much more fierce at magazines, in order to sell a story to a top magazine you have to beat out some of the best short story writer sin the world. Your story can't be as good as their, it must be
better in some way.
So here's the question. If you can't convince an editor to request chapters of your novel, how will you convince an editor to reject a famous writer in order to buy one of your short stories?
If no agent is requesting sample chapters, you're doing something wrong. You're writing a poor query, and you're including poor first pages.
Chances are, if you could get credits from top magazines, you wouldn't be writing a poor query, and your first pages would be more than good enough to make an agent want to see more.