Rejection Analysis

People who know me well, know how analytical I can be. It’s the side of my brain that allows me to be a good nurse, that jumps into action where numbers are concerned, while the creative side of my brain allows me to come up with multiple story ideas. Well, I decided to look at my query history and analyze the responses. Here is what the final analysis was:

I sent out  20 queries resulting in 14 rejections (1 encouraged me to send him my next project) and 6 with no response at all. So, 70 percent of the agents queried gave a definitive no, while 30 percent didn’t respond to my query.

Now, I understand that my query failed to interest 14 agents, but I have a little trouble understanding when there is no response at all. As an art and creative nonfiction editor at Glassworks magazine, I would never consider not responding to a submission. Rejections are what form letters were created for.


Now that I’m finished analyzing my rejections, It may be time to take another look at the finished novel and rewrite my query letter. 

Or… perhaps I’ll move on with another work in progress.

Self doubt and agony

Okay, so I promised myself that I wouldn't allow myself to feel down about my rejections. Unfortunately, after updating my list of submissions to agents to include big fat NOs on the queries that I haven't received a response on for months, where I must assume rejection, my rejection rate has increased all the way up to an earth-shattering 18. Clearly, my query letter wasn't good enough to generate any interest. And, yes, after reading Noah Lukeman's How to Write a Great Query Letter on my nook, I see some glaring issues with my query letter. Time for a rewrite.

Updates - super short post

Well, I have received yet another rejection, bringing the grand total to 13. I am still waiting to hear from one particular agent that I was fortunate enough to meet a couple years ago. Keeping my fingers crossed that she will ask for more of the manuscript.

I wrote an extensive blog post on my genealogy blog about historical record indexing.

Plan to begin working full speed ahead on one of my works in progress tonight after dinner. Will post an update to this blog soon.

Rejected again ... but still writing

Sometimes when your query is rejected - I've been rejected for a total of eight times now - it's hard to keep your chin up and keep on going. Even so, I still have so many stories in my head waiting to be told and every day I have new ideas that come to me like fall leaves raining down and fluttering around me (how poetic, ha ha). I know that I'm not a one story wonder. I have so many stories to tell. So, I am keeping my chin up. I'll keep submitting queries for my novel, continuing all the while to pray for an agent to take an interest.

New topic now ... well not totally new. Since I am still writing every day in spite of my rejections, I thought it would be neat to add a word counter or two to my sidebar. I searched for ways to change the code imbedded in this page. I did a google search for progress bars and found that most sites give you the ablity to create it on their site then copy and paste the code into your page. Well, I didn't like the idea that every time my word count changed, I would have to go back to that page and put all the info in again to create a new bar every time. I knew there had to be a better way to do it, but I wasn't sure how. It became a more and more frustrating enterprise until I happened upon this link:

http://www.licketyknit.com/progressbars.html

It seems that a kindly man named Matthew Harvey created a progress bar for his wife's knitting blog. He was kind enough to share it with the world under the Creative Commons license share alike 2.5. At the URL above, there is code you can copy and paste into your page and personalize just like I plan to. Please see also the licensing at the bottom of the page where the code is provided. Be sure to paste the code into your page so that it includes credit to Matthew Harvey.

Oh, and by the way - had to share this picture I took of my dog - note how tiny my cat Spike looks in the background :-)

First video blog post

As promised, below is my first video blog ... hmmm, is it then called a vlog?  Unfortunately, the video isn't of very good quality due to two things: it's my first time, which means that I know little to nothing, and I was holding the camera in my left hand. I'll be getting a tripod on Monday (already has been shipped by Amazon) and hopefully my video blogs will improve with the tripod and a little more experience  :-)

A form rejection to my query ....

Woke up this morning and looked at my email and - tada! - there it was... yet another rejection letter. This time the rejection did not say "Dear Author." It didn't call me anything. There was no salutation at all. It did apologize, however, for being a form rejection. That leaves just one query letter out there without an answer. According to that agent's website, she only responds if she is interested in seeing more of your work ... so I must assume that I will likely never hear from her.

Time for another retooling of the query letter. I will also begin work on my synopsis today. I'll be using two books to help me do both of the above: Your Novel Proposal by Blythe Camenson and Marshall J. Cook and The Marshall Plan for Getting Your Novel Published by Evan Marshall. Though they give slightly differing advice, I'll try to pull out the best each has to offer. I also will consult a couple websites.

This 4th rejection got to me today - it created tremendous self doubt.

I know from my reading that many successful and/or famous authors have endured rejection and continued to soldier on. So, I went to google to search for some inspiration and came up with the following websites full of rejections - some of the rejections are laugh-out-loud funny

Famous Rejections by Susie Smith
James Patterson: first novel rejected 26 times by Debbie Ridpath Ohi
Writers and rejection: don't give up by Debbie Ridpath Ohi

A rejection with a little more sensitivity

I received another rejection, but the sting of it was lessened by the fact that it addressed me by name and said that my story was intriguing ... just not quite right for that agent. She did add a note of encouragement to her rejection.

Oh well, adding one more rejection to the list. It's starting to hurt a little less.

... on the plus side, and total off subject, the Amazon Vine newsletter came out and I just ordered two books to read and review. I love free stuff and I love to read. Yipee!

Rejection, rejection how do I hate thee

There it was in my email inbox - an email with "query" in the title. I took a deep breath, stared at it for a few seconds, then gently clicked the key to open the email. There it was... my second rejection.

Now have received a total of 2 rejections. The first one at least used my name in the salutation. The one I received tonight, via email, said "Dear Author..." Now, isn't that special.

To query or not to query, that is the question...

Having received my first rejection, I have some decisions to make. The first decision, to revise my query letter, is an easy one - it obviously needs to be revised. The second decision, who to query (agent(s)), is not an easy one. I'll deal with each issue separately.

Query revision:
I have read multiple books and websites and they all give different guidelines regarding the number of paragraphs and what to say in your query letter. Most agree that a query should be one page. Some say to use a standard three paragraph query, while others give examples of winning queries that were longer than, and more detailed than, the standard three paragraph query. Confusion abounds here. I recently read a query letter in the 2010 edition of Writer's Market - their example of a good query letter was one page, but consisted of eight paragraphs. So my trying to force everything I had to say into three paragraphs could have been my undoing (may have led to my first rejection).

Query to agents:
Some agents require exclusive submission while others state that they accept simultaneous submissions. Much as I would like to increase the statistical likelihood that an agent might want to see my entire manuscript by sending out multiple submissions, I must say I'm a one agent/one relationship-type. Which leads back to the first question: with each rejection, do you continue to revise your query letter?

UPDATE: Just created a submission tracker in excel so that I can keep track of submissions, rejections, and form rejection vs. rejection with comments.

First rejection

Got my first rejection today ... bummer. I only submitted to one agent so far. Back to the drawing board with the query letter - will have to spend some serious time retooling it... After I am satisfied taht my query has improved substantially, I'll try submitting to another agent.