How do you stay sane while querying agents?

[CakeRage]

I finished my first book earlier this year (after saying for years I was going to write it), and started submitting to agents 3 weeks ago.

I’ve had a couple of replies, both really encouraging, but ultimately both rejections, and I feel like I’m losing my marbles. How do you keep it together while waiting? Not sure I can take the emotional rollercoaster

The first agent replied within hours to ask for the full manuscript, emailed again the following day to say she was halfway through and absolutely blown away by it, then a few days later to say she did love it, but thought it needed a few changes making. I revised the whole thing (10,000 extra words of work), then she replied just to say it wasn’t working, and she wouldn’t be taking it further.

To be honest I’ve been pretty gutted by it. How do you stop the little judgy voice in your head which tells you you were an idiot for getting your hopes up?

The second agent replied to say she was really impressed by my writing, but didn’t feel I was a good fit for her list at the moment, and recommended another agent (different agency) who she thought would like it. I handled that one much better, even though I guess it was more of an abrupt no.

Please tell me how you cope with this stage - or come commiserate with me at its horribleness!

(Sorry for my crazed rambling - feeling all my feelings this week!)

Silence, silence, silence here .

I have made a start on another novel but my heart isn't really in it - I feel I either need progress or closure on the finished one before I can properly get into the next one.

I have been feeling very low and wondering whether I'd be happier if I gave up the idea of getting published and wrote simply for pleasure. One of the happiest times of my life was when I plunged into writing what turned out to be a 150k word epic, purely for pleasure - I completely lived that book, it became more important than my life; so much so that I actually cried when I finished it. That was more than 10 years ago and I still look back at those days, wishing they could come again.

Then I tell myself I might as well finish submitting this novel, even if I only send it as a copy-and-paste submission to the 25 agents still on my list.

Then I tell myself that if I'm submitting it, I might as well submit it properly with a tailored package ... and round and round I go.

My confidence has plummeted and I find myself unable to believe I got that full request, as it now feels impossible that I will get another.

So that's my moan over! Can anyone cheer me up with positive news?

My confidence has plummeted and I find myself unable to believe I got that full request, as it now feels impossible that I will get another.

I feel just the same way Preparing. Another rejection today, liked but didn't love, and also the market is extremely tough. That I can believe.

On the plus side, I found out about a new agent who reads in my genre and have just submitted to her. She has a lot of experience in other publishing jobs, but only set up as an agent two years ago, so should still be building her list.

I'm wondering whether I should decide that querying agents is my new hobby - maybe if I stop expecting anything to come of it I can just enjoy pestering them.

Fingers crossed for you with the new agent, NJ!

I've been trying to target newer/less high profile agents too, in the hope they'll be more receptive to my work. My one and only full request came from an established agent in a large agency, though, so I am not ruling them out. It's possible established agents might have more time to spend on submissions because they'll have more staff to help on the admin side. Or maybe she just emailed the wrong person by mistake when she asked for my full .

Anyway, I've tried to cheer myself up by sending out another submission this evening. I've reached the stage where I'm cringing as I try to 'sell' my novel. This particular agent doesn't have much of an online profile so I couldn't do much 'tailoring' - a bit of a shot in the dark, really.

I’ve been busy as hell this week, and finally had some time to think over the last day or two. I’m wondering how much importance the title has, and considering an experiment where I submit my book to a couple of agents with a different title.

I think the current title works well once you’ve read the book, but I’m wondering if it’s a little on the dark side as the first thing people will notice about it.

It’s worth a try anyway, right?

How’s everyone else getting on?

Idiot report today: I just did three submissions and have only just realised that in the first two I said I was attaching 3 chapters and accidentally attached the full instead

I hope they don’t think I was being an arsehole. Ffs!

I just got an offer of representation for my first novel and am freaking out. (NC, have been on the creative writing threads before.)

Small agency, minimal online presence — was referred by a novelist acquaintance who is represented by this agent and is doing nicely — but has done some high-profile recent deals according to The Bookseller. What’s the intelligent thing to do? Can I email the six other agents I’ve sent it to and say I’ve had an offer of representation to concentrate their minds?

Would it be a dumb move to stall this agent a bit? What questions should I be asking? (Other than checking with my acquaintance who is represented by her...)

I should say that it’s an unplotty literary novel which is unlikely to have mass appeal...

Congratulations DisputedChair!

Can I email the six other agents I’ve sent it to and say I’ve had an offer of representation to concentrate their minds?

Yes, do that right away, and with something like Offer Received in the subject line so they don't mistake it for another submission.

What questions should I be asking?

Jenny Savill who is an agent with Andrew Nurnberg Associates suggests the following:

What’s your approach when you take on a manuscript?
Do you provide editorial help?
Where do you see my book sitting in the market?
What’s my book like (in relation to other books/genres)?
Where might you submit? What editors would you send it to?
Questions about rights - where would you try and place it? How might the project do in the US or foreign markets?
What will you do about film/tv rights?
What are your rates of commission?
Remember to grill the agent. Make sure you meet them. If you forget to ask anything, follow it up with an email until you are sure your vision is the same.

Copied from a post about how agents and writers work together: www.wordsaway.info/new-blog/2019/1/19/how-agents-and-writers-work-together-with-jenny-savill

Cake don't fret, must happen all the time! At least you didn't miss the attachment off altogether. You can always resubmit and explain what happened.

I don't know how much the title matters - hoping not much as I'm not thrilled with mine. It can always be changed later, but if you think you've found a better one I'd go ahead and use it.

Thank you, Norma. That seems like excellent advice.

Congratulations Disputed! That’s really exciting. Let us know how you get on

Meanwhile, I’ve had rejection number 7 today - liked but didn’t love/try other agencies.

Not the best news, but I prefer it to total ghosting!

Well done, Disputed. Everything I've read on the subject says you should let other agents know about the offer - if all goes well you might get other offers and then you can make sure you choose the agent you think you could work with most effectively.

Absolutely nothing to report here but silence. Like Cake, I prefer rejections to silence.

I wrote to the other six agents at breakfast time, and by lunchtime after five weeks of total silence since I submitted I had replies from three of the six.

Two of them nice rejections -- one saying he could see why someone else was keen but that he personally found my approach too [rather outing term, which I will redact], which probably meant he wasn't the right agent, but he could easily see it doing very well.

One slightly frustrating one saying she'd not had time to read enough of it yet to decide and was about to go on holiday for a week, and she'd step back if I was very keen on the other agent, but if I wanted she'd read it as soon as she got back. Which is what she said in mid-May too, when she first got it. I'm not holding my breath on this one...

I'm posting this purely to muse aloud about how quickly some agents get back to you once they know you're potentially being picked up elsewhere. It occurred to me that it would be possible for someone to invent an interested agent, surely?

Well done everyone else for persevering. I agree rejections are better than silence. I think the fact of getting four agent replies in 24 hours felt almost more surprising than one of them being an offer. You get so used to feeling as if you are shouting into a wilderness.

Has it been 5 weeks since you submitted to all of them, Disputed? How long did it take the interested agent to get back to you initially?

I always feel like if I’ve heard nothing in the initial couple of weeks it probably ain’t good, but don’t know how true that is!

That's brilliant Disputed! So pleased for you. Keep us posted

Has anyone submitted to an agent where all they ask for is for a query letter, and then if they're keen, they'll ask for chapters/synopsis? I did one like that last week and really dislike it - it feels like they're putting up so many barricades before you even begin!

I'm pledging to do another 2 submissions this week. Still not heard anything back from my very first one of a couple of months back...I would love a generic rejection email at least!

I sent to all but one on May 15th, @CakeRage, but the one who made the offer was someone I only sent to last week, after I had a rejection from one of the original set -- she took six days to offer. But I just had a request for a full from one of the agents I 'reminded', this afternoon, too, and she's had it since mid-May.

(It may not be coincidental that one of the two I have yet to hear back from is one that uses a generic submissions email address, rather than direct to agent. Presumably it takes a while to filter through to the right agent via seventeen layers of assistants!)

I've never submitted a query letter only, @Sickofphd, but I have on my desk a submission to an agency which only accepts paper copies, which I somehow haven't got around to sending.

Oh I have one on my list which only accepts submissions by post, and it’s annoying me the the point where I may not send it, —unless I get desperate-- It does make me wonder how annoying working with them would be, though.

I’ve also done one where I only sent a couple of pages rather than 3 chapters. That was actually one of my full requests. Maybe I just didn’t have the space to ruin it, haha.

I wonder how many good books they miss out on cause the writers can’t write an exciting, hooky cover letter?

(Ignore my early morning riddled-with-errors posting, please!

My printer isn't working properly, so I'm not considering paper submissions at the moment!

I'd love to know properly what goes on inside a literary agency - not the bright, positive things they talk about in interviews, but the reality.

I'm so fed up of silence. It bothers me that there are agents I am technically still hopeful about, but my work was probably deleted weeks ago.

Re. accidentally sending the full - surely the only reason they don't request the full in the first place is to reduce email sizes - otherwise I don't see why they wouldn't just request the full every time and read as much as they needed to. There are two on my list of possibles that ask for the full as part of the submission.

On my very first submission, I ballsed up and didn't attach anything, so had to resend with an explanation. I haven't heard back from that agent and probably won't now.

Paper submissions are really annoying - I'm ignoring those ones for now!

How is everyone deciding what order to submit to agents in? I.e are you submitting to ones you really want first or starting with less desirable ones?

I too would love to know what goes on in a literary agency. The one where they specify a query letter only is frustrating me right now - surely they could respond to a 250 word email quickly? Are they all really as busy as they say they are? Who knows.

Also, I just got an acknowledgement of receipt from an agent I submitted to yesterday and in it they've misspelled the name of my book. It made me chuckle since any error on our part when submitting seems to be fatal, even if it's just forgetting an attachment!

Form rejection week here. I've had 3 so far. Agent with the full still has it. I haven't even bothered updating the spreadsheet. I'm demotivated.

I have a list of several agencies who only take postal submissions and am leaving them till last in the hope that I'll never get round to them. I do worry that they haven't really moved with the times. Thank God most agencies now accept email submissions, or postage would have cost me a fortune by this time.

DisputedChair I forgot to say that if you haven't already, you should join the Society of Authors. They can look at the agreement with your agent and advise you on it, and will also vet publishing contracts when the time comes. Agented authors who haven't yet published can join, when I looked a few weeks ago you had to download a form from the website and post it in. www.societyofauthors.org/Join/benefits

Sorry about your rejections NJ. I’ve had one too, this week, plus another has gone past the time limit where they say ‘if it’s been over 6 weeks, assume it’s a no’.

I’ve changed my title and pitch and tested it on a couple of new agents, so let’s see how that goes.

I did also annoy myself looking through the shelves of paperbacks in Asda. There were a few which looked interesting, but most of them, especially in the women’s fiction section, just sound like the same book written over and over again. How are they all getting published if apparently it’s such a tough market?

Has any more happened with your offer, Disputed? It’s nice to see a good news story on this thread

I always think that Cake - if the market is as tough and competitive as we are constantly told, why are there so many samey and frankly not great books being published? But maybe that's part of the risk-averse nature of the industry at the moment - they are looking for the same thing if it seems to sell.