Rejectomancy

Received an interesting personal R from West Pigeon Press:

Unfortunately, we are going to have to pass. Fragments like these are a hard sell. This seems like a genre exercise. Ninety percent of the story is fairly innocuous, and then there's some kind of dark twist toward the end; it's well-worn ground. This isn't a criticism per se; but we like stories with a personal stamp.

Click to expand...

So I take it they didn't like it, huh? Sent it off to DSF, because I like it and that's all that matters.

That is an interesting R. Commiserations. I like genre, myself. Good like with DSF. I get their daily email.

Ouch, that's a rough rejection. My WPP R was much kinder, will submit to them again when they reopen. Keep in mind that whatever any one editor thinks doesn't matter; the harshest R I ever received was for a story that sold to the very next market I sent it to.

And, speaking of Rs, my rejection of the day is a 74 form (?) from Cast of Wonders. They said "Unfortunately, the piece is not for us. We liked it, and found it fun, but can't quite fit it into our schedule right now." I'm wondering whether that's a form or not.

So that makes it 9 straight days of rejection. All of my oldest crickets have been slain. My oldest submission at this point is from late December. But I do have a few pieces that are approaching Duotrope average response times, so I might be able to keep the rejection streak alive!

Hugs, Defcon. If that's one of the ones I've read, they're a bunch of dummies.

alexshvartsman said:

So that makes it 9 straight days of rejection.

Click to expand...

OK, I had to look... You've got three days to go to tie me, and four to have me beat.

12 straight days, 1/16-1/27/12, a total of 20 rejections during the streak. (Followed by a second five-day streak after a one day gap.)

My hat's off to you, sir

But then, I'm doing this with only 15-16 stories out on submission total!!!

Going to be adding one or two more to the mix this week (final edits on Price of Allegiance and The Tinker Bell Problem are on my agenda), so we shall see how that goes!

alexshvartsman said:

Ouch, that's a rough rejection. My WPP R was much kinder, will submit to them again when they reopen. Keep in mind that whatever any one editor thinks doesn't matter; the harshest R I ever received was for a story that sold to the very next market I sent it to.

Click to expand...

Totally agree. An editor's comments are a lot like critiques (despite them saying it's not a critique); always take it with a pinch of salt.

Hopefully your R streak breaks, Alex. I remember last month I was pummeled with R's. Not fun.

O'Dandelo said:

Hugs, Defcon. If that's one of the ones I've read, they're a bunch of dummies.

Click to expand...

Thanks, Micheal. No, it wasn't one you read, but it was posted on SYW some time ago.

Wasn't the eyeball, was it???

I loved that.

Lillie said:

Wasn't the eyeball, was it???

I loved that.

Click to expand...

No, that one is currently sitting in The Uninvited slush pile. Thinking of which, I need to query about it; it's overdue for a response.

And I love it, too. Creepy eyeball.

ETA: If anyone wants to read said story, I can email it to you, though I feel the story is pretty solid, if ambiguous. I'll probably start sending it to literary markets since it's kind of an experimental story.

Fingers crossed for the eyeball story

I've had a 8 rejections since I started submitting two weeks ago. After each rejection I redo the query. Here is the issue. 3 said: "I love the voice but don't get the story" and 3 said "I really love the premise (or story) but don't feel the characters"...most have said they like the writing......I've had two not mention either that were form letters...but besides this confusion, I do think my first 3 chapters have an angrier "voice" because of horrible circumstances that then change because the protagonist's situation changes...so that's something I have to tackle with the "voice" people...so now I'm thinking I want to send in sample writing that isn't the first 5-10 pages as another way to "query" to see the response and wonder what issues would come from this as most say "the first 5-10"?

My story is a straightforward, clear story and it's just not going to morph into something else...so from what I can see this is a query issue and the people with an issue with the story, well they don't like maybe the hard issues it deals with and I can't change that...but I want to be able to not just sell the idea of it to an agent but best represent it and it's very frustrating that it is being rejected out of hand by the "voice" people who are concerned (and rightly so) that the entire book appears a YA book about an angst driven teenager when in fact she's not so beyond the first few chapters when she's being dragged and introduced to a new enivronment...plus, there's no involvement with later characters that form the feel of the book in tandem...as I've had a number of readers go through it, I know the "voice" issue isn't experienced by my readers because they've read the whole thing...so this comes down to how to put across the general nature of the book "voicewise" in my query and I see no other way then to take more typical "voice" writings from further into the book...any thoughts on this?

Got a "didn't quite work for me" R from Fantasy & Science Fiction today. Is that lower tier or higher? My first one was "couldn't hold my interest," which definitely sounds worse.

Marzioli said:

Got a "didn't quite work for me" R from Fantasy & Science Fiction today. Is that lower tier or higher? My first one was "couldn't hold my interest," which definitely sounds worse.

Click to expand...

Higher. Congrats! (not as good as an acceptance, but better than lower tier )

Cool!

Note: Just found this comment from Gordon himself about their tiered system:

"Didn't grab me" typically means the opening of the story didn't grab me.
"Didn't hold me" typically means that the story initially engaged my interest, but then it lost me somewhere in the middle of the story.
"Didn't work for me" usually means I finished the story but felt that it came up short of the mark.

Click to expand...

At least they finished reading it. That's a plus. This was the same one held for 45-days at Apex, so (assuming the Apex wasn't a clerical error) maybe it's not a complete wash after all.

Aggy B. said:

I would NOT try and send something other than the opening pages with your query. Agents want to see the opening of the book, not the part you think is most interesting/has fewer "turn off" points.

Have you tried Query Letter Hell? They may be able to give you some insight into where the query isn't working. (Also, I'm not really sure about the wisdom of rewriting the query with every rejection. The issues being mentioned are likely related to the story and not the query. Revising the query to try and smooth over those issues in the story is a bad idea.)

And, just like with short stories, your novel may be getting rejections but that doesn't mean there isn't an agent/publisher who will love it. One of the stories I sold last year was initially rejected by a market I thought would really like it, but they said "not enough conflict." The next market bought it.

You need to be concerned if they are all saying the same thing (or different versions of the same thing) like - The characters are too flat. If you get the SAME reason for rejection from everyone there may be an issue. If you're getting a bunch of different reasons, it's may be more due to personal taste.

Keep it up!

Click to expand...

I'll check out query hell...and yes it's a different reason every time...the responses are diametrically opposed...it's either they don't like the voice and love the story or don't feel for the story and love the voice. I figured if it's voice for 50 percent that's something I can tackle by going to a different part of the story that is "typical" of the voice throughout the novel as the beginning sees the character coming from an extreme trauma where it would be unnatural for her to not be "angst ridden"...Angst ridden teenagers is apparently a kiss of death for YA submissions as "this isn't what publishers are looking for at this time" as one respected YA agent told me...my character is only "angst ridden" at the top of the story.

I'm rewriting the query every time because 1. I added in comparables when I got two agents say they didn't "get" the story. 2. I point out the social issues the novel deals with in my query because I'm now noting some agents do specifically want to take on books dealing with specific social issues and if you don't put this into the query they could quickly pass on a book that appears to be a simple adventure novel unless they bother to really read the synopsis 3. some of these agents don't "get" the social issues the story deals with and don't want to take on novels with serious issues like this and it's best they just know so the time isn't wasted. 4. I've added in very obvious platforms that some agents aren't aware are platforms because they're not familiar with the time frame of the story and the impact of that time frame on a certain MILLIONS of people and the locations of the story etc. which has a draw for MILLIONS of people 5. I've added in the group of characters are multi-cultural as there's no way they'd know that from the first 5-10 pages as the characters aren't introduced yet, even though I do mention enough in the synopsis they should get this.

In conclusion it doesn't appear just sending in a synopsis and sample suffices without the agents convinced they're able to sell the thing based on knowing there's a platform, finding comparables as my novel isn't typical of any YA novels except a book like Secret Life of Bees which is marketed as General Fiction, not YA (look it up) and trying to figure out how to pitch it to agents who won't dismiss it as unsellable YA because the instant they see the age of the protagonist, 15, they figure if it's not appropriate for 10 year olds they can't sell it to their contacts....and this book isn't for ten year olds unless they're out of certain kinds of families and would relate in a positive way and have the reading skills.

So yes this is about the query and finding agents who deal with coming of age stories that aren't necessarily pitching to YA publishers as it doesn't appear novels like mine have sold as YA, yet over and over I'm told I must pitch it as YA because of the age of the protagonists. I was told this at a pitch conference by a few agents who only specialize in YA, however, though I pointed out the comparables that aren't marketed as YA...I was told just by the age of the protagonist it must be pitched this way. It's been very frustrating.

In any case I'll check out this other thread thanks.

Izz said:

That was its 10th R, and it's been close at several venues (was held by one pro-paying mag for over 300 days). If it hasn't sold after 10 more markets i may think about retiring it

Click to expand...

At what point do you consider retiring a manuscript? I am writing a series, and if it never gets accepted by an agent, I don't know if I could retire it and just put it away to collect dust. I'm attached to my characters and I want them to be out there.

What do you do if you get R by all agents but can't bear to let go of your story? Revise query and synopsis before resending it? Is that even recommended?

theresa.mcclinton said:

At what point do you consider retiring a manuscript? I am writing a series, and if it never gets accepted by an agent, I don't know if I could retire it and just put it away to collect dust. I'm attached to my characters and I want them to be out there.

What do you do if you get R by all agents but can't bear to let go of your story? Revise query and synopsis before resending it? Is that even recommended?

Click to expand...

I queried about 30 agents for the novel that got me my agent. Before that, I sent out around 60 for another. For that one, I wish I had stopped halfway through and realized something wasn't working to do a revision, but I'm happy with how things turned out. In hindsight though, I can see that a revision might have yielded better results before exhausted the query pool. A friend of mine queried over 100 agents for one of her manuscripts. She landed an agent and then later a three-book deal with a top publisher. So, I think it boils down to how much you believe in the story and how many agents in your genre you can find to query.

Aggy B. said:

Oh. And a rejection from EDF for Bourgeoisie. They didn't feel the story developed enough. (Originally it was written for Leodegraunce, so it's 200 words or under.) Oh, well. I've got two more in the same length still sitting there. If they get bounced I'll have to look at Ambit or something similar again.

ETA: And there's one for Legacy. Bet I'll get Pride back today too. >_<

Click to expand...

Sorry about the R, Aggy. I've only seen EDF publish a story that length once that I can remember, in the last year and a half. Not that you shouldn't try

Aggy B. said:

I guess, I'm just wondering if you keep thinking 'Oh, I should add this in to the query letter" then maybe you're rushing to submit and need to spend more time on the query. Reading through Query Letter Hell may help you decide that.

Click to expand...

fantasycreature, also try Query Shark. This blog format site is run by Janet Reid, a literary agent from FinePrint Literary Management. While not EVERY agent is going to agree with her preferences, I believe you will find many agents do. Read through her critiques, including a dozen or so queries she thought were perfect, and you'll get a sense of what to include and what to avoid including in your query.

The biggest tip I picked up on in the query manufacturing stage of novel writing was: once you've polished it to perfection, don't second guess it. You can't avoid all criticisms, can't address everything an agent MIGHT say in advance, without losing the impact and power of a simple, succinct, well-written query.

Aggy B. said:

I guess, I'm just wondering if you keep thinking 'Oh, I should add this in to the query letter" then maybe you're rushing to submit and need to spend more time on the query. Reading through Query Letter Hell may help you decide that.

What I'm reading from you is a lot of conflicting information. And I can only think that you're trying to hard to make the story sound marketable. (And, yes. That is the point of a query letter.) But you can't pitch your novel as something it's not just to make an agent read the sample pages because then they will be disappointed ("This isn't what the query indicated.") But my advice about the sample pages still stands. If you think the voice in those chapters is offputting, then change the book. Do not try and send in something more palatable as a sample, because if they do request more, you'll still be dealing with "But the opening is angsty teen whatever." (And quite likely "You can't follow submission guidelines.")

Just my thoughts. YMMV.

(Also, another comparable to a novel with a young adult character that isn't sold as YA is Ellen Foster.)

Click to expand...

Thanks...yes...my book is closer to the voice of Secret Life of Bees in tone but Ellen Foster is definitely of the same genre without question and it's not marketed as a YA novel...I'm not misrepresenting anything in my queries...I'd been only querying the YA agents because I was told that the novel was YA simply because I have a 15 year old protagonist...I was told this at the WD conference...based on no other criteria though I pointed out the novels the book is similar to are not marketed as YA.

It has been surreal.

I've stopped submitting it to YA specific agents or with the words "YA" even in the subject line hoping someone out there will check it out seeing it as anything but YA, calling it anything they wish, as I had posted on here originally saying I had this dilemma and nobody could 'vocalize' what genre my book is and now I'm back to this again. It's completely absurd to remove the "offputting voice" of my protagonist at the beginning of the book as it's truthful to the trauma she's been through and would destroy the integrity of the story which I won't do just because half the YA agents I sent it to can't sell a book with a character's voice like this as NO YA book is published with a character's voice like this....because the book is NOT YA.

I looked at the Query Hell area and my issue needing the synopsis "fixed" or changing the opening of my book, ergo, is not addressing the problem.

If anything I've been adding specifics so no one's time is wasted while sending to these YA agents...my concern, from what these agents say, is it's possible the industry has created this category and is now locked into it, and I'd think if this is the case for sure Ellen Foster, written in 1987, would today be called YA in 2012 and would never have been published because it "doesn't fit into what they want now in YA".

For sure if this is the case, my novel will never find a home...I'm just hoping there has to be someone out there, besides Oprah, who is an advocate for these issues and these characters and these kinds of books.

As only 2 weeks have gone by since I started submitting, truth to tell I've yet to hear back from agents I've submitted to since I dropped calling it "YA" in the introduction to my queries....for now I'm calling it a coming of age fiction" which I've also read is the "kiss of death" in a query but I have no choice as this is what it is, and hope for the time being that suffices to not "misrepresent" the book.

Thank you for your suggestions they have been helpful.

fantasycreature said:

I have no choice as this is what it is, and hope for the time being that suffices to not "misrepresent" the book.

Click to expand...

Hey there! See my post directly above yours about another site, Query Shark, to help with your query. You've said a lot of things that make me think you could use the help, because trying to perfectly alleviate all doubt and fears is exactly what you shouldn't do. Queries are general. You're trying to capture attention because of the unique story idea and intriguing characters. Everything else, even genre, is secondary (though obviously necessary, written as a succinct description at the beginning or end). And IF you have the prior two, the latter will take care of itself, provided you have a "winning" query.