Thursday, February 27, 2020

Input needed!

I've been asked to contribute to a list: Things That Drive Agents Bonkers.

Of course I have a list.
Of one gazillion items.

But it dawned on me that all y'all might have a list too, and it would be interesting to see what we have in common.

So, if you have a spare moment or ten, in the comments column below, tell me what drives you crazy during the query process.

Please don't single out any agent by name OTHER than me.
Me, you can rip to shreds if you want.**




**(Of course I'll come to your house and steal your children, let them loose on the incoming queries, then return them some time later with a subscription to Poetry Magazine, a disdain for homophones, and a taste for whisky, but that was your choice)



**and yes, yesterday's review was for Moby Dick. 
Clever readers we have here!

44 comments:

KMK said...

NORMAN's. Getting ghosted at any step of the process -- I once did an R & R for someone who didn't respond until I queried her for a new project a year and a half and one broken relationship with an agent later. It's all part of the same thing that leads writers to send horrible, mean responses to form rejections -- and something we already know YOU would never do: forget that we're all struggling human beings just trying to do our jobs and maybe make the world a little better in the process. This business, and this world, can be very ugly, and if we forget to treat each other with kindness and respect, even if we will never meet outside the ether, we're lost.

E.M. Goldsmith said...

First commenter out the gate beat me. NORMANS. No response is so hard to gage. When has a no response means no happened? Two weeks, two years?

It seems like in this time of technology, agencies could at least scheme for an automatic pass to be generated after x number of days/weeks or when they move the query into a certain folder. Just so we can chunk the agency off our list with confidence.

The other thing that makes me super nervous (but to be fair, agent totally within their rights) are the agents that want a query letter and nothing else, no pages, no synopsis, nothing but a query letter.

I always wonder if I should change my query letter to be a bit longer with more of a synopsis for those agents? It leaves my rodent wheel spinning off its axis. I have two agents of that ilk in my next five and am all worried about how much I should tinker with the query for them.

Bunny said...

No reply to the query. Yeah, we know agents are busy, they get tons of queries, they don't have staff, they have to feed the dog, yadda yadd yadda, but I find it unacceptable that they won't take the time to at least send a form reply. It's part of their job, and it's disrespectful to the work the author has put in. The agent could flag the rejects and pay minimum wage to a high schooler to send the replies. No reply casts them in an "I'm sooooo important that I can't stoop to do the not-fun stuff" light. That's not an agent I would want to work with, and if they ignore my query, they won't be on my list for the next one.

Leslie said...

I realize most agents can't give a personalized response to every query, but at the very least there should be an automated response letting the writer know it has been received -- and, ideally, either how long it usually takes for a response or notice that if no response in a certain timeframe, it's a no.

To me, what's even worse is agents who request material and then go into the witness protection program. At this point, I think that some sort of response should be a basic minimum requirement. Once there has been mutual communication, nobody on either end should just go silent without explanation. Basic manners

S.P. Bowers said...

No response means no. To a query it's hard. To a requested full/R&R it's terrible.

Margaret S. Hamilton said...

Rewrite as a cozy. Nobody reads traditional mysteries (in person at a pitch event).

Jill Warner said...

Fortunately, most of my interactions with agents have been very professional.

But in 2018, an agent offered a reasonable deal where for $X, they'd do two rounds of edits on a query letter within a week or two (absolutely no promises of offers, etc). But then news about a high-profile schmagent made the rounds on Twitter. The agent sent back the first round of edits and apologized for the delay since the schmagent-news kinda broke them. I sent in the revised query letter for the second round and never heard back.

I'd have thought that I got scammed except that agent works for a reputable agency and one of my favorite authors is still happily repped by said agent.


Then at a recent conference a friend went to, attendees could register for a 10-minute query critique session. One individual sat down for their session. The agent looked at the query, said "I hate this," and then nothing else. That individual sat there for a couple more minutes, then when it became clear they wouldn't get any more feedback, left in tears. It'd be one thing if this were a pitch session, but it was promoted as critiques.

Perfectlyaveragecakes said...

I find the whole debate around personalising your query really REALLY tedious.

I know you've said you really don't care about this, Janet, but other agents do, and then it's a minefield because most of them also go on to say: but 'don't just parrot my wish list back at me', or 'liking me on Twitter doesn't count as good personalisation.'

So what does? As a Brit, I won't have met them at conferences, or done a pitch session. Sometimes there are interviews about them to read and reference, but sometimes not. Sometimes I admire their clients, but not always. Sometimes I've read their books, but not always. Sometimes, an agent goes on my query list for no other reason than: they're a great agent who reps my genre and I'd love to work with them.

Like, I get that no agent wants to feel like a writer is just spamming every inbox in the land with their query, but at the end of the day, don't both sides know that we're querying far and wide because we want an agent?

Also - a lot of the time

Richelle Elberg said...

Erm....I googled yesterday after posting and found this?? Of course, that's just one blog (https://allpoetry.com/column/9016787-Mean--and-Infamous--Book-Reviews-by-WandaLeaBrayton):

And from The Boston Globe's review of Melville's "Pierre (or The Ambiguities)":

"But the amount of utter trash in the volume is almost infinite -- trash of conception­, execution, dialogue and sentiment. Whoever buys the book on the strength of Melville's reputation­, will be cheating himself of his money, and we believe we shall never see the man who has endured the reading of the whole of it.... Comment upon the [plot] is needless. But even this string of nonsense is equalled by the nonsense that is strung upon it, in the way of crazy sentiment and exaggerate­d passion. What the book means, we know not. To save it from almost utter worthlessn­ess, it must be called a prose poem, and even then, it might be supposed to emanate from a lunatic hospital rather than from the quiet retreats of Berkshire. We say it with grief -- it is too bad for Mr. Melville to abuse his really fine talents as he does. A hundred times better if he kept them in a napkin all his natural life."

Colin Smith said...

Hmmm... definitely NORMANs. When I was last in the query trenches a few years ago, I recall some (maybe more than a few) agents did not even send an automated message to let you know the query was received. Combine that with a NORMAN and you have the recipe for a nervous breakdown. Not only do I not know if the query got through, but if they pass on the query, I'll NEVER know ANYTHING!!! Maybe things have changed, but I recall finding that particularly annoying.

Do agents feel pressured to keep on top of queries? I guess there must be a certain FOMO attached to whizzing through the slush pile as quickly as possible. But I think most writers would be willing to wait a bit longer if they knew their query would receive some kind of response, even if it's a form rejection.

Carolyn Haley said...

I'm with all who object to the "no response means no" practice. Even if that policy has a time window, it's not just rude but also an unsafe assumption. No response could mean the query didn't get received in the first place; or it got passed around inside an agency and fell between cracks. If the point of getting an agent is to have a business professional on the author's side, and the norm for a literary agent is to be swamped with queries, it's a red flag if they don't have their business organized enough handle the volume. There are software and cheap-labor ways to deal with acknowledging, processing, and responding, as others have noted.

Colin Smith said...

YES--seconding Perfectlyaveragecakes. Is an agent really going to turn down a compelling query because I didn't mention why I selected her? Does it really matter? We all know writers are going to query many, many agents on the basis of minimal criteria (e.g., you represent my genre and you appear to be sentient... most of the time). You'll be my dream agent if you call to offer representation, and I discover on the call you are the perfect agent to represent my work. Prior to that, I don't need to know you from Adam's house cat, other than you're a legit agent with either a good reputation or working for a reputable agency.

Am I wrong?

CynthiaMc said...

No response is the coward's way out.

A form "this isn't right for us, thank you for submitting" is fine and takes about a second to cut and paste.

We get agents are busy.

We're busy too. That novel we slaved over, got up early or stayed up late to work on before we went to our jobs that pay the bills, the one that took a year or two or ten to write, polish, re-polish and send out with a kiss and a prayer, should be worth a polite cut and paste.

Casey Karp said...

NORMANs, yes.

But also agents who don't disclose significant information on their submission guidelines.

I had one query rejected with "Is this humorous fiction? I hate humor!"

That seems like the kind of thing you might want to mention somewhere, if only to cut your queries down to a manageable number.

Megan V said...

There are things that are annoying for me (like a query NORMAN and some QueryManager questions....really am not a fan of QueryManager sometimes...and 1 or 2am rejections that rouse me from sleep because my notifications ping goes off lol) and things that drive me up a wall.

Me vs. the wall things—

No response on fulls (aka no communication with regards to requested material even after one or two separate four-month nudges)

No protocol for what to do with requested material when an agent leaves agency or leaves the business entirely.

Talking about non-asshat writers from their inbox on any form of social media or podcast without that writer's consent. (I've seen this upset so many writer friends and the response they often get from others well you consented when you sent their query because you should have known that agent does this if you had done your research and I'm calling bull. If it's not on the agent's main website in no uncertain terms that they will do this, then don't do it).


Inconsistent instructions/ areas of rep on various websites.

The absolute expectation of personalization other than Dear Actual Name of Agent and sticking to what they rep, when there's nothing out there that a writer can really utilize for personalization unless they want to parrot an interview or come off like a creeper.

And the expectation that a writer must do something like listen to vlogs or podcasts or hire an editor etc. because some of those things aren't readily accessible to all writers for some reason or another.









Claire Bobrow said...

Only one thing: NORMANs.

Jen said...

Lack of communication, especially once you HAVE an agent, is so frustrating. I had a novel on submission and didn't hear anything for MONTHS. I don't need weekly updates, but for goodness sake, a quick reply to an email would have been nice. Grrr... (No longer with said agent, FWIW)

Nicole said...

Ghosting/NORMANs: on queries, pitch contest requests, and (worst of all) requested partials and fulls. I know publishing isn’t like any other industry, BUT in any other industry, non-responders to potential client emails is completely unthinkable. And agents who say they will respond to every query…sometimes simply don’t. Disregarding that you can set up your email to send auto-responses however you want, please just send us a form like “Your query has been considered and I will not be requesting more materials. Thank you for your time and good luck!”

Using interns for slush pile reading; I know you’re busy, but we’re querying Agent A, not Agent A’s assistant who started 2 weeks ago. This becomes especially infuriating when you get a Twitter pitch request and then the intern rejects you, then a few months later the same agent likes your pitch again and it turns out they never even saw your first query.

Giving pointless feedback/easily fixable feedback when agents feel the need to provide SOME kind of feedback; we get that it’s subjective, give us enough credit to just tell us no thanks without making us spin our wheels.

Reject for reasons that could be easily fixed without offering an R&R. Just give us a form, we don’t need feedback every time.

Forms that sound like they might not be forms. It’s great you have multiple forms, but TELL us that it’s a form. That way when you’ve really personalized a rejection, we can tell and we can add you to our next manuscript’s submission list.

Every agent requiring something different and expecting you to check 7 different websites and 12 different articles and 4 different podcasts. Spending 2-4 hours on a single query that is most likely going to be rejected is exhausting and increases feelings of spite and anger every time. Putting the metadata at the start of the query or at the end of the query or having a typo somewhere should not be the basis of a rejection for a manuscript we’ve spent 10 years on. And that's not even counting how any or all of the information could be out of date.

Twitter Misbehavior
This could be an entire comment/article unto itself, but it’s really demoralizing to see agents taking to public-facing Twitter to complain about their day-to-day. Every industry has crappy aspects you complain about with your coworkers, but you do it at the water cooler or in a private Slack. You don’t take to Twitter where your potential clients and current clients can see you. Watching agents subtweet honest mistakes on queries, give air to the trolls in their inboxes, blame writers for daring to get an offer on a manuscript they’ve left sitting in their inbox for months and months and then not notifying them (b/c of the NORMAN expectation, but only sometimes) or not giving them long enough to read (despite giving the industry standard of 10 days to 3 weeks)—it’s exhausting and feels so much like a punch-down. This also applies to agents always complaining about how busy they are for such little money; newsflash to them, what do you think writers do before they’re signed? We work for years just trying to get to an agent inbox, with no money, no professional input, no expectation of anyone giving a damn for quite possibly decades. Writers have 2, 3, 4, and more jobs alongside their writing and are told to “take their complaints to the group chat” by agents who don’t bother to do just that. We work for pennies, too. I know working on commission isn’t great when you start, but it’s what you signed up for, right?

I could go on and on, but it’s the hypocrisy, the punch-downs, the subtweets, lack of centralization, and the non-responses, mainly.

Melanie Sue Bowles said...

I don't have anything new to add, but feel compelled to pile on because these two issues are extremely irritating and imho unprofessional: Not knowing if my query was even received (a simply auto-reply would be sufficient), and NORMANs.

Emma said...

I can sort of make peace with NORMAN on a query, but it's an absolute deal breaker on a requested full. I had an agent request a full once and then never get back to me even after a couple polite nudges spaced many, many months apart. When a few years later an editor offered to introduce me to that agent with a new manuscript, my response was visceral: "not if he were the last agent on the planet." I will never work with someone who can't be bothered to respond to a full request even with a form rejection.

Agree with everybody else's points as well.

Craig F said...

I will go along with everyone else on NORMANS.

I also hate ambiguous query requirements. Some agents spell out what they want and others don't.

Carolynnwith2Ns said...

Nothing bothers me during the query process especially when my favorite and brilliant agent has a full.

I'm stuck in lottery ticket limbo. The time from buying the ticket to scratching it off is wondrous.

KariV said...

I have another comment, kind of an anti-comment I guess, along the lines of NORMANs.

No response from an agent is frustrating for an author, but of course being skittish woodland creatures who perpetually run on our hamster wheels, we wonder "do they hate it, or did they never even RECEIVE my query???" As an author I LOVE autoresponders confirming my query is in the agent's inbox. Then if there's no response (NORMAN), I check the agent off my list, but at least the agent got my query and (presumably) read it. Agents who don't send an autoresponse of receipt AND practice NORMANs are a nightmare for an author's nerves.

Android Astronomer said...

One thing I ABSOLUTELY HATE -- I mean, it just BURNS me to the VERY CORE -- is when agents...

wait...

Ah, I see what you're doing here. No way I'm falling for this trick!

Barbara said...

I don't want to hear how busy agents are. Agents work at a profession they chose. They knew what it was like going into it. And doing the job is no more difficult than someone else doing their job, especially if their job is menial work, or physical labor. Then they come home and do all the things we all do, and work in time to write.

Imagine if agents had to live by their own rules. They go out to a busy restaurant for dinner and are told to please wait patiently. The restaurant is so busy, the waiters may not get to them tonight. If they haven't been served by closing, it means they won't be served at all. And because we're so busy, we can't even stop by your table to let you know if we'll serve you or not. You'll just have to wait and see.

And, oh, by the way, just in case we do find time to serve you, we'd like to know the names of three similar restaurants you've eaten at, and let us know how their food is similar to ours.



Colin Smith said...

Barbara: ... and why you chose this restaurant... :)

Eileen said...

Please treat writers with professional respect. Auto-respond confirming that you received a query and letting us know your timeframe and expectations. For example, NORMAN after 4 months, or please nudge after 6 months, etc. Also, if you request a partial or full, do NOT ghost us… it’s rude and unprofessional.

Lennon Faris said...

Of course, NRMNs. I am still surprised that professional people do this.

Compromise at least? Some agents update their slush pile on Twitter or their website. So if your date has been passed, at least you can check it off.

Also, I love auto-replies. ZERO effort and time. At least you know they got it.

And yes Twitter. I always look at potential agents' social media. Hey, if you have an incendiary viewpoint, maybe keep a personal account separate. And I try not to judge anyone complaining about their job, but if it's often, that's a little disconcerting. It's like seeing your surgeon tweet, "Hey everybody I'm really dreading this surgery tomorrow bc it's super hard and I'm dead tired, wish me luck!!"

Janet, thanks for the vent here.

MA Hudson said...

This is only a sub-complaint but I'd love it if the form rejections were written in a way that shows they are definitely form rejections. Sometimes I can't quite tell and I sit and analyse every word, turning my head sideways and upside down, and squinting my beady eyes, all in an effort to discover even the slightest bit of personalisation.

The only reason it matters to me is that when someone takes a small moment out of their busy day to give a stranger acknowledgement or encouragement, then my heart sings and I cut and paste that agent's name into a special highlighted list of lovely people I will always appreciate.

(As you can tell, I obviously don't get many of these. LOL)

Leslie said...

* Barbara, that is brilliant!

* I agree with MA Hudson that knowing if a rejection is personalized or a form would be helpful.

* You guys are the very best! I love the insights and the humor.

LynnRodz said...

I won't start querying until later this year, but I'm sure NORMANs would be one.

Btw, great analogy, Barbara.

Beth Carpenter said...

I remember when I saw an announcement that someone who had been holding my full for many months had agreed to judge a writing contest, I wanted to advise her to get her own work done before volunteering for more. Petty, I know.

Margaret S. Hamilton said...

Forgot to add the agent who wasn't interested in authors "from the great void" (west of PA and east of CA). She visibly shuddered.

Brenda said...

Norman’s, of course.

Personalizing queries.

Waiting. (Having said that, don’t rush. I’d rather have you take your time and get it right. By that I mean sign me.)

Brenda

NLiu said...

I haven't started querying yet so I can't speak to the whole NORMAN thing (though I imagine I will find it a source of angst and despair when it comes). Right now it's The whole difficulty of fulfilling agent requirements to query (personalisation, listing previous publications when I don't have any, etc.) and even finding out what they rep or if they're the real deal / non-schmagenty. It seems like I'm expected to sign up to reams of websites - none of them free - to find out this information quickly, or in some cases at all. I can't afford that and it's depressing.

Brenda said...

And the agent who wanted me to submit a marketing plan along with the partial request.
Brenda

RebeccaB said...

1. NORMANs, which everybody already said. If I don't get any reply at all, I will not query that agent again for future projects.

2. Submission guidelines that are "extra": when an agent's SGs basically suggest he doesn't want your carefully crafted industry-standard query, but instead, wants something specific that requires you to create something new from scratch. So, in addition to having to write the novel in the first place, write multiple editions of a standard query, write a 1-page and 3-page synopsis to have at the ready, we have to stop our momentum and write a new, custom Frankenstein query just to please this one guy because he only wants two paragraphs or some arbitrary thing. And no one else is going to want it, so you'll never use it again. And then he NORMANs you. I've noticed the most demanding, high-maintenance agents are the first ones to NORMAN.

3. The inconsistency of stated importance of comp titles: Some agents insist on them. Some agents don't care. But that's a dangerous subjective. What if I compare mine to a book the agent HATES and I get rejected based on that? Janet Reid may not reject someone based on an errant comp, but I'm sure someone will. Then there's rules about which titles you can use: don't use something too old, don't use something that was too successful, etc. I get that you should keep abreast of what's current, but why does a professional need me to tell her where something goes on the shelf? I'm an amateur and probably have it wrong, anyway. If she read my query, she should have her own ideas about similar titles.
I'm a police officer; I don't catch a perp and then ask the victim what I should charge him with. It's my job to know that ("You said 'Assault,' but it's technically 'Simple Battery,' so unfortunately, we have to let him go").

Has listing the perfect comp title ever been the determining factor of someone getting rep? I can't believe that if a query or concept sucks, but you compared it to Book X, they'd still throw a contract at you. So why do some set so much store by them? They're just one more thing I have to worry about getting wrong in this process.

KDJames said...

I can't answer the question, not yet having queried, but I find it really interesting that in 38 comments (so far) we writers pretty much have one universal complaint: lack of response. You'd think a problem this pervasive, and this infuriating, would have been addressed and resolved by agents before now.

And Janet has a list of gazillion things that drive her bonkers -- probably she's being polite and it's really two or three gazillion.

That imbalance is . . . interesting, I guess. Probably I'm being polite.

I've said this before and will reiterate, in case any agents-who-are-not-Janet are reading along, that I will never query any agent who has a stated policy or reputation of NORMAN-ing writers. Not that I'm some great catch and they'll regret not hearing from me, but I simply refuse to be treated that way in a business setting. I think other writers should do the same. Maybe this practice would change.

The Noise In Space said...

(Note: all "you" mentions in this rant are general, not referring to any agent in particular)

AGENTS WHO DON'T SPECIFY THEIR GENRES, OH MY GOD. It drives me up the wall. If your agent bio is "I'm looking for projects I can connect with. Something that speaks to my soul. I'd really love to find the next thing that will turn the world on its ear. I read submissions on the subway, so I need something that will grab my attention and never let go. Something that takes me back to my roots and reminds me why I fell in love with reading in the first place"........then you're an a*****e.

"I rep everything!" No you don't. Maybe you'll rep *anything,* but that's not the same, and even then, I doubt you really do.

"All my repped genres are on my twitter." Well, you never pinned that tweet, so after scrolling for a solid half hour I can't find it.

"All my genres are on my website." Oh, you mean this old blog that you haven't updated in eight years? The one that doesn't match up with what you've sold recently and lists an agency you're not even with any more? I'm guessing that's wrong now.

"I'll read anything that speaks to my soul." This is just a waste of everyone's time. It's utterly meaningless and I expect you as a professional to know that. Do better.

Dollars to doughnuts, these are the same agents that will then go on twitter rants about how writers keep querying them for genres that aren't theirs. I just want to slap them--if you told us what you rep, you wouldn't be in this boat, now, would you?

It's very easy. A) Make a list of things you rep (I don't care if it's hard to pick. Pick.) B) Post THAT SAME LIST in all the places (agency site, PM, personal site, social. If it's a tweet, pin it.) C) Once a year, ask yourself, "is this list still true?" If not, update. That's it. That's literally it. It is literally the most basic foundation for this job and I am shocked at how many agents disregard it. If I read one more agent bio that says they just want "something they can get excited about" instead of naming genres paired with tweets about queries they didn't want, I'll lose my mind.

Tell us your genres. Tell Us Your Genres. TELL CLAP EMOJI US CLAP EMOJI YOUR CLAP EMOJI G E N R E S.

The Noise In Space said...

Nicole and Barbara: I'm giving you both standing ovations. Extremely well said.

And on Nicole's point about being foisted off on an intern/assistant--this is genuinely one of my biggest fears.

theblondepi said...

I'm the dissenting vote: I don't care about NORMAN. Like at all. It is not an agent's job to respond to the query of a writer who is not their client. It is there job to take care of their clients, to spend time on their clients, to respond to their clients. Most of them would like to read a query and find new talent, but they don't owe that to me. I am not yet their client when I'm querying. I'm lucky they read my email at all.

Perhaps it is my prior life as an actress. I had to get a talent agent a few times (they go out of business or we part ways). Getting a lit agent is nothing compared to getting a talent agent when it comes to hoops that have to be jumped through. You have to get a talent agent to take time out of their day to *see* you, not just read something you email them. They have to see you and they have to see you *act*, either in a monologue or scene in their office or in a play that they take time out of their life to attend. Sure, everyone wants to discover the next Brad Pitt. But again, their actual job is to represent the clients they have. And if you think getting your writing rejected is hard, as an actor YOU get rejected if the agent doesn’t want you. After you’ve acted for them. As an actor you develop a thick skin or you get committed to Whistling Pines. It is a business and you are the commodity.

Whether or not I'm right in not caring about NORMAN: it made for a fairly painless query experience. If I got a reject, form or not (again, I couldn't care less if it is a form letter), I sent the reject to the "REJECT" folder in my email so I wouldn't forget I'd queried them, and I sent out two more queries for each reject. If I didn't hear back I didn't care. There are so many agents! It isn't personal! When I got an offer I just wrote the people I hadn't heard back from. It literally made no difference in my life. I was lucky in that I got an agent in less than two months. But was it because of my business-like attitude towards it? Maybe.

But I do have a “thing that I hate” when it comes to agents: being unkind towards authors. And that includes some of the things you guys have mentioned here, including the “personalize the email…but don’t throw my MSWL back at me…” and also an agent on Twitter made fun of an author whose font changed after the “Dear Ms. Jones,” because they clearly copy/pasted. Okay, look, we all know we copy/paste. Do you actually think I’m going to type 80 queries out separately? At least I took the time to write your name. And if you don’t put the salutation into MS word and then copy the entire thing and put it in the email, it might change the font on you. That is petty and mean.

Publishing is a professional business, and everyone should be professional—on both sides. Agents shouldn’t be on twitter making fun of authors, or on podcasts doing it, and they shouldn’t make unreasonable demands when it comes to querying. But you know what? I didn’t query those agents. If I thought they were petty, or mean, or unrealistic in their requests, I didn't query them. There are so many agents! So they didn’t get my book. Or the book deal I just got ;)

Dena Pawling said...


>>I'm a police officer; I don't catch a perp and then ask the victim what I should charge him with. It's my job to know that ("You said 'Assault,' but it's technically 'Simple Battery,' so unfortunately, we have to let him go").

I've actually won several traffic trials with this exact argument. The ticket stated my client violated X law but the facts don't support a violation of X law. My client actually violated Y law [altho that's not how I argue it]. Case dismissed.

>>Please don't single out any agent by name OTHER than me.
Me, you can rip to shreds if you want.**

Thankfully, you respond to all queries, which is good news since the badge on the left side of your blog says you're up to date as of 9/28/2019, which was FIVE MONTHS AGO! Slacker..............


Alyssa R said...

I'm with the NORMANs-are-the-worst people. I haven't done much querying yet, but no response is my nightmare. Unless (general) you say "if you haven't heard back in one month (or whatever length of time), we're not interested," definitely don't do it. Preferably a form rejection anyway.

Alena said...

Normans are hard. I tell myself if they like my MS I'll hear from them and try to bury the anxiety away. An agent actually made fun of me on Twitter once. It was thinly disguised and clearly me. They asked (in their online form) 1) why did I query their agency, and 2) how did I find their agency. I truly hate those questions. We all know the answer, because 1) I want to see my book on shelves and 2) Google! What answer do they really expect? It's like applying to McDonald's and having to answer an interview question of why you want to work there, because I love McDonald's so much? Because I want money! I have rent to pay! I have an agenda and so do you and maybe we can help each other out! So this time I jumped through the why do you like our agency hoop and dug up some dumb butt kissing answers and by the time how did you find us came around I just answered honestly, Google! And they made fun of me on Twitter for it. And their Twitter bff's commiserated and also made fun of me as all good Twitter bff's do. It was dumb and annoynning. Oh well!