Friday, September 17, 2010

Nothing Is Easy

I sucked it up this week and sent out four email queries, to four hand-picked agents. One was a referral. One is an agent whose blog I read regularly. Th other two represent authors I like a lot, and whose styles aren't horribly different from mine. Then I waited.

The nice thing about e-mail queries is you usually don't have to wait too long. Delays in physical mail (The Sibling Correspondent is a letter carrier, so no derogatory "snail mail" references here) are eliminated with e-mail queries. That's why I do them first. I never have to worry about the limbo of wondering if an agent will get back to me only if they're interested, because I don't query those agents.

I heard back from one the following morning. Thanks, but she's not accepting new queries until mid-November. She didn;t say to re-submit, but she didn't say not to, either. I'll remember her if I'm still in the market then.

Today's reply was a puzzler. It was blank. The agent hit Reply, then Send. No typing intervened. What I have here is my original query e-mail, then, at the bottom, her e-mail signature block.

Cryptic, eh? Was she in so much of a hurry to get this rejection out she just skipped the "get lost" part altogether? Or was she so eager to get the full manuscript she got ahead of herself like a stammering child who just learned of something he wants so badly he can't get the words out? Or is it just sloppy work?

Most importantly, do I care enough to find out?

2 comments:

Mike Dennis said...

Scratch those two, Dana. You can do a lot better.

Dana King said...

UPDATE;
I can safely say the blank reply was an error. I received a nice rejection from her today. A rejection, true, but with an invitation to query other agents in her agency, as they're all looking for different things right now. She also provided a link to their agents' listings. Can't ask for more than that in a rejection.