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!)

Trafalgar, haha, exactly.

Good luck with your full request Violette! I think ‘marshmallow-coated gobshitery’ is one of the best descriptions of those sort of rejection comments I’ve ever heard 😂😊
It’s so true, I’ve had similar comments as well. The ‘it’s great but I just don’t love it enough’ is heartbreaking because it’s so close but so far.

Keep at it and best of luck!

Thank you, Jacqueline! You keep at it too. Yes, the so close but so far comments are the most heartbreaking. We mustn't let it grind us down.

Agents should only take on books that make their hearts sing.

That kind of comment irritates me. Unless you have a very easily-stimulated heart, very few books are going to make it 'sing' - whatever that means. I expect a book to entertain and absorb me - anything else is a bonus.

I sometimes wonder how we have reached a place where writers have to tie themselves in knots to persuade people to take 15% of their earnings.

I totally agree @VioletteSnow - the rejection sounds patronising and dispiriting. Unless you have a massive ego, you're not going to be able to sit there typing away for the umpteen months/years it takes to write a novel thinking 'this is really going to make someone's heart sing'.

I only came back to writing after working in publishing for a bit (not in the publishing side but close to it). Viewing books as products took the mystique out of it for me, which gave me the strength to try again. Otherwise it's too intimidating to write under the impression that unless it's great art it's not worth reading. Or what you do write becomes too affected.

I'm on my 4th form rejection here. Even from Carina who I looked into and thought were basically a sweatshop for romantic writers. The very cheek

"I sometimes wonder how we have reached a place where writers have to tie themselves in knots to persuade people to take 15% of their earnings."

Absolutely. It should be like this (slightly altered by me) quote from Picasso: "Agents should mean as much to writers as ornithologists do to birds." (he said critics/artists).

SexNamesRFab, 4th form rejection, I'm sorry. From reading your posts though, it sounds to me like you might really do well if you can just keep going. Maybe you made some useful contacts in publishing..?

I heard it's good to send out another pitch after you receive another rejection. I don't always do that though, and sometimes, well, gin is involved.

I got an agent during lockdown and my book has now sold to a traditional publisher (two book deal). Lots of rejections along the way (par for the course).

Ah well done @catterwaul - good to hear a success story. I'm batting them back and I won't give up hope until I hear back from the agents who showed interest all those years ago. @VioletteSnow You are right I need to get more shameless about using whatever tenuous connections I have. My tally is now:

6 form rejections
2 I've since realised don't reply/are closed to queries
12 still out

Ps - To those of you who are published, DM me your pen names and I'll order your book and write you a review instead of staring at my inbox/phone forlornly.

Well, I also managed to get an agent during lockdown but, sadly, she has not sold my book. Like Cake, I got a lot of great feedback from editors, some very flattering comparisons and it was pitched to the department once or twice but, ultimately, no one wanted it enough. Unlike Cake, I have been very rubbish at writing the next one - it took me a while to get over the knockback of the first not selling and, despite thinking a lot about the latest, it's just not flowing. The only thing that is keeping me writing is the possibility that if this one sells, I might be able to repackage the first one. Good luck to everyone else .

Cheers! I got loads of form rejections. I had another bash at my cover letter and tweaked the synopsis, cut a bit from the opening, and lo and behold, nearly every agent I contacted after that asked for the full. Ended up with a couple of offers. So sometimes it really is the marginal stuff that is putting them off.

Well done catterwaul, that is the dream! Sorry no news yet everythingcrossed and cake, but definitely take heart for the future. I listened to The Happy Author podcast the other day (excellent if anyone isn’t familiar with it) and in an interview with an agent that was one of the things mentioned, that often first books might sell down the line rather than straight away.

Still no word at all re mine going on sub. I’m telling myself it’s because it’s nearly xmas and that’s why and trying not to obsess about the missing italic on a word I spotted and line space that randomly disappeared where there should have been a line break on the last version of the MS that went out 😭

I was gutted yesterday when the agent who'd shown me serious interest in the past (read my previous full twice and gave me lots of advice) came back to say she's not taking on any new clients (without reading, don't think she remembers or cares who I am). I tried to remind her but it's not going to happen.

I know in my heart she's not the right agent for me, but I thought she might at least give the sub a read and offer some wise words.

Current tally: 17 still out, 8 form rejections.

Question: are you limiting yourself to UK agents or do you hit up the US ones too? I'm submitting to both because I write steamy romance (as one element of a good story !) and the US tend to be less sniffy and/or prudish about it.

Aw, sorry to hear that, everythingcrossed - it really is a tough time to be out there. I’m expecting the same, but around half the editors who got my sub still haven’t replied. Even my agent is baffled. Assuming that no news is a no? I did have to laugh, though. She isn’t used to getting ghosted at all, but I told her half the agents I subbed to in the first place never replied so it’s quite fitting!

Commiserations SexNames as well - I’ve been there, and it’s shit. Just keep going

And well done catterwaul - you must have the golden formula!

My agent was so outraged by one editor's response (which she considered flaky) that she wrote to a senior person at the publishing house and demanded someone else look at my book. Like you, I was just amazed that she was getting any replies at all after the months of cold shouldering I'd had. Still, good to have a bad ass on my side .

Re: agents should only take on books that make their hearts sing. I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand, they've got to sell the book and use their contacts in the publishing world to get a good deal for the writer and so they have to really believe in it (or the trust that editors have in them will be lost). On the other, it's hard to square with some of the half-baked dross that does make it onto the bookshop shelves.

Thanks, CakeRage!

Re. books that make their hearts sing, I think that has to be slightly overstated for some agents but not for others. If you write in a very commercial genre and there is a formula to it, it’s partly about whether your work ticks the right boxes. But most agents I know who take on literary/crime/historical fiction do genuinely love their authors’ work. And they reject nearly everything they see, so it’s not an embarrassment to receive a stack of rejections. You just have to keep making your work as good as you can make it and keep knocking on doors.

On the other, it's hard to square with some of the half-baked dross that does make it onto the bookshop shelves

Yes, that's one reason why I struggle with singing hearts. Even discounting the dross, thinking of some of the formulaic books I've read - yes, they're entertaining and pass the time, but it's difficult to imagine them making anyone's heart sing.

When I first started, I had it in mind that an agent would take a ‘good enough’ book, if I’m being honest. I hadn’t really given enough thought to their workload, or to their editorial relationships. But now I’ve worked with an agent for a bit I can see that they only take things they have a high degree of confidence in. One agent I chatted to informally said he wouldn’t take something on unless he could think of ten editors who would probably love it. That was intimidating. He also said he gets 1,000 submissions a month. I asked how many projects he takes on and it’s about 5 a year. Or so he said.

To be fair - not sure I believed him! But if he had a fullish list already then it might be true.

Catterwaul I've heard similar though, my agent said she would have that sort of number of submissions if she didn't close her books for a large chunk of the year. And on average she takes on 2 new authors a year.

Crazy! I’ve long suspected most agents of only reading the first couple of pages of most submissions. How else would they get through them?

@catterwaul

Crazy! I’ve long suspected most agents of only reading the first couple of pages of most submissions. How else would they get through them?

That's fair enough though, isn't it? If I picked up a book by a writer I had never heard of and I didn't like it within a couple of pages, I would put it down again.

I think it may be even less than a couple of pages. I was at an event where they did something called a 'slush pile slam'. They had a panel consisting of an independent editor, an agent and a senior commissioning editor. Someone started reading from an ms and the 3 people held their hand up when they had heard enough to decide if they would read any further and each time it was no more than half a page. So half a page and they'd already decided if they wanted to read any more.

I suppose it is fair. I think lots of writers imagine their whole three first chapters have been judged to be rubbish, though, when actually half the agents haven’t really read them!

Jesus, half a page, that's harsh. My own nightmare scenario was taken from the pages of Sally Rooney's "Conversations with Friends" in which the 21yo protagonist has an internship at a literary agency and is in charge of the slush pile. I kept imagining a student flicking through my MS about a woman in her 40s and her lip curling with disdain .

everythingcrossed

That’s quite normal as well. I came close to an offer with one agent who employed a professional reader. She read the whole novel before passing it on to her boss, and every single book that came through the agency.