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?

It's That Time Again

I terminated the agreement with my agent over thirty days ago, and she didn’t want to represent my most recently completed book, anyway. I compiled a list of publishers who will accept unagented submissions. I prioritized the list. I chose six who will accept simultaneous submissions to query first. I created a table of all the documents I need for the submissions, and who gets what. (Queries alone go to A,B, and C; bios go to B and D: D wants the first 100 pages; F wants the first three chapters; D, E and F want synopses, each of different lengths.)

I’ve found every conceivably justifiable reason to put off actually writing the query and the synopsis and the bio. Now I’m actually going to have to do them.

Shit.

Query Me This

Annette Dashofy, a contributor to the excellent collective blog Working Stiffs, has provided a link to a PW article by agent Stephen Barbara that arrived to me though Sisters in Crime via a friend. Barbara’s subject is “The Great American Query Letter,” and comments on what he clearly considers to be the Golden Age of the query letter.

According to Barbara, more good query letters are written now that ever before, and it’s driving him crazy. It used to be an agent could look at the query letter—maybe not even have to read it—and know immediately the book could be passed on. (See his article for an entertaining passage on how he’d just know.) Now, thanks to seminars, webinars, blogs, and a general understanding that a writer must get the agent’s attention before he can get a reading, all the query letters look great. Most of the writing samples still stink, but now he has to read them to separate the wheat from the chaff; the query doesn’t help with elimination. He ends his article by saying not to worry too much about queries you send him. (It’s another entertaining passage, well worth reading. The whole piece is fun.)

From a writer’s perspective, this is probably good news. I have friends who spend time and effort agonizing over queries when that time would have been better spent on another draft. At least now we know of one agent who isn’t going to use a white glove to see if your query is worthy of reading your book, so long as you avoid certain obvious errors.

It may make things a little harder for agents, and God knows they don’t need any more on their plates. (Just read one of their blogs for more than a week and see if that topic doesn’t get mentioned.) It can also free up some time and energy for writers, who can concentrate more on getting a better book out, which should work to everyone’s advantage.