Janet, do all agents read a query on the first day? And is the tagline that they'll get back to authors in 3-4 months just a line?
No they don't. I've been told I'm one of the fastest readers, and as you can see from the blogroll on the right I'm only caught up through 7/14 as of today.
I know several VERY good agents who take a week or more to read queries. And lots more who take a LOT longer.
BUT the industry standard on query response is not 3-4 months. It's 30 days. And given my colleagues loathsome practice of no response means no (insert rant here), 30 days is about the outside limit to wait for a reply.
HOWEVER you should BE READY in case the agent reads your query the exact minute you send it. I've had this happen several times. Some writers are certain that a quick reply means I didn't read the query; others aren't ready to send the manuscript when I've requested it. If you're making a list of best practices: BE READY to send what an agent wants BEFORE you send the query is a good one to list.
7 comments:
Janet's right - she's lightning fast (though I think Nathan Bransford had her beat when he was agenting. I got a rejection from him in like 12 minutes.). The longest time for a response for me was 7 months, which is 4 months after I'd written the agent off as a "no response means no."
She also means it about being ready and the turnaraound THERE is lightning fast too: Query sent at about midnight my time; response from Janet requesting a full by 8:00 her time; I had to teach a class, so I sent her the full at about 11:00 am my time; we talked on the phone at 6 that night. She had read my book. THE WHOLE THING.
This is not only to say she is a superstar (cause, duh), but to say that if I had queried her with an underripe ms, I'd have been VERY embarrassed by her request.
Janet is the ONLY agent who ever sent me a personalized rejection. That was when I was a noob and sending the one's that started: My fiction novel is 53,345 pages and is for kids in their teens, etc. Janet patted me on the head. When I reread it today, I can hear the "You poor helpless soul" in her voice. Because of her personalized rejection, I've been a fan of both her and her authors.
What a lovely thing to say. Of course you must never say it again or people will think I'm nice instead of what I am: mean and sharkly.
Thanks for the extra beignet, cher. I'm so glad that we have you here to keep us from stepping on our hems with the good advice--be ready.
I'm glad to see this answer. Because I've seen SEVERAL writer blogs (by now-published authors) who said words to the effect of, "I sent out three queries with partials and got requests for fulls within 24 hours."
So I honestly started to wonder if, as was asked, agents give them a glance on the first day. If it's amazing, they jump. If it's ... eh ... they need time to think.
The fastest response I have had was emailing someone on a Saturday and having a partial request come back on the Sunday.
ERM...I thought I was ready until I actually received that response. Then I developed fingers of clay and sat on my MS for three days.
After sending it out, I figured I was good to query again (it was not on an exclusive basis).
A few rejections came in (including one from our lovely blog host - I was chum for her bucket) and bang! Another request for a partial. I may have had fingers of clay before; now I had jelly. One week later *hangs head in shame* I've sent it off.
Maybe I should have just not bothered :(
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