Most of you weighed in that the "simply too busy" author wrote her astounding query with her tongue firmly planted in her cheek. Perhaps the underlying mission was to poke at agents who had rejected her.
I hope it made her feel better. Getting form rejections is no fun at all, I understand. But, for most agents, as we've discussed on this blog, the other option is no response at all and most authors don't want that either.
We receive over 100 emailed queries each week. Can you imagine how many hours we'd spend writing personal rejections? We'd have no time to read OR to sell.
So, Ms. Simply Too Busy, suck it up. If you're a fine writer and you've written an exceptional book, some lucky agent will want you to be his or her special darling. Excellent writing trumps all.
Happy weekend to all my author friends!
1 week ago
2 comments:
As a 'zine editor, I find that form letters also relieve me of the guilt of possibly causing someone to change what could be a perfectly good manuscript, just "not for me". More than once, I've been ready to reject something that was "not for me", only to find it snatched up by another publication.
There's more to the form rejection than meets the eye.
No, I don't like form rejections, but at least if I get one I know the agent saw the query. Not getting anything leaves me in limbo -- did they get it at all?
When I get the dreaded form declining my work I remind myself that many of the current best selling novelists received those too, and on books that they went on to sell to another agent who was able to get them a good publishing deal. An agent has to feel good about repping a book/author. If they don't, then no matter how good the book is they're not going to put their heart into it.
So I'm not giving up. I know there's an agent out there who will love what I write as much as I do.
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