As I recorded on this blog some six months ago or so, I decided to submit my most recently completed novel to a publisher during their once every couple of years open window for un-agented authors. With six to nine months to wait for them to get back to me, I decided to query this novel, i.e. send query letters to literary agents to see if they would take it on. I had no real expectations of success in either venture, I did it for the experience of doing it. The last novel I had queried – directly to publishers – was in 1980, so it was sort of a trip down memory lane.
Here is my literary agent report card. I set the bar for passing very low; a response. Professionalism is a two-way street. A response to a business inquiry deserves at least a 10 second response in a timely manner. All an agent needed to do to pass was to hit the return arrow on the query email, cut and paste a canned rejection letter on the reply page and hit send. Since agents can control not only the flow of queries via opening and closing query windows, but the number of clients they take on, there is no excuse for not responding to every query they accept. “Too busy” is not an excuse, for who knows what else they would be “too busy” to do, should they take your work on.
All these are American agents. All represent science fiction. All are open to queries from unpublished authors, and all were open to submissions when I submitted my query. All but one query was sent on or before Oct 1 – i.e. 3+ months or more ago.
Pass:
Hannah Bowman, Liza Dawson Associates; 4 Weeks – Stacy Testa, Writers House; 9 Weeks – Adam Schear, DeFiore & Co.; 9 Weeks – Jim McCarthy, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret LLC; 12 Weeks – Andrea Somberg, Harvey Klinger Literary Agency; 6 Weeks – Zoe Plant, The Bent Agency; 1 Week – Cameron McClure, Donald Maass Literary Agency; 5 Weeks
Fail:
Markus Hoffmann, Regal Hoffmann & Associates – Peter Rubie. FinePrint Literary Management – Shannon Snow, Creative Media Agency – Stephen Barbara, Inkwell Management – Joshua A Bilmes, Jabberwocky Literary Agency – Matt Bialer, Sandford & Greenburger – Stacy Testa, Writershouse – Michael Harriot, Folio Literary Management – Suzie Townsend, New Leaf – Lane Heymont, The Tobias Agency – Amanda Rutter*, Azantian Literary Agency – Naomi Davis, Bookends A Literary Agency
So what did I learn from this exercise?
First, and foremost, how happy I am that my creative works are not being held hostage by these people. I can reach a small but appreciative audience all on my own, doing it my way. I knew that already, but it made me appreciate the choice I made eight years ago all the more.
I came to better appreciate what people who view being a writer as a romantic occupation, and want to be a “real” one, have to endure in their pursuit of their dream. Better them than me, but still, they should be treated better than what they are.
The other benefit was a little more speculative. As time went on, I found myself vaguely dissatisfied with some parts of the novel, even after I had sent it off to my beta readers. Since I had the time, I took that time to try to address those nagging doubts by doing some revisions to the novel. I ended up adding over 5,000 words to it in the process. The question I can’t answer is; would I have done that if I hadn’t submitted the novel, or would I have released it with those nagging doubts? By the time I finished writing it, I knew that I would be submitting it. I knew that if, on the off chance, it would be picked up, it would go through several bouts of editing, so that it didn’t have to be perfect. But if this hadn’t been the case, would I have released it as it was in June? Or would I have held off and revised it, as I eventually did?. I can’t say. On one hand, I’m not the most patient of men, but on the other, I did delay the release of one of my early novels because I was dissatisfied with it, so going over it again would not have been out of the question. In any event, I see the advantage of waiting a while before releasing a story, though whether I will or not do so in the future is an open question, one that may never arise again. We’ll see.
At any rate, I have emerged from query hell unscathed and wiser for it. All to the good.
*Just as I pushed publish on this, I received an email from Amanda Rutter saying that she was leaving the business. It is a tough business, for writers and agents alike.
My first report can be found here:
Writers Supporting Writers 
Thanks for sharing this experience, Chuck. It reminded me of my querying days. I’m also remembering advice from a “how to get published” workshop that asked writers to imagine the stressful lives of agents and publishers–crowded commutes by subway, wet feet, cold pizza for supper (I kid you not!). How dare we approach them with sloppy queries or badly written manuscripts!
You’re right, with email responses requiring only a few clicks, there’s no excuse for no response from people who consider themselves professionals.
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Traditional publishing is one of the last industries to think it’s still viable. They’re not. They just don’t know it yet.
They’re entrenched middlemen in a 500 year old business model that is destined to evolve fully into direct author to consumer delivery.
It’s just gonna take another decade. That and better discovery services.
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I agree. The publishing paradigm is changing.
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Alas, in the not very distant future, authors will also be cut out of the business. Just as soon as they teach AIs the formulas to write genre novels – 5, 10 years? Amazon has the cloud computing business to generate a million AI written books for its Kindle Unlimited program in a day once the AIs have been trained to write novels, so I expect that human content providers will be out the door, saving Amazon half a billion dollars a year in KU payouts.
And I’m sure smart people are already planning on offering custom tailored AI generated content directly to readers via an app on their phone or computer for a monthly subscription. There’s not much of a commercial future for writers.
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I must agree with you. Traditional publishers are going the way of dinosaurs. They are still milking famous writers from years ago like Grisham and King, but there aren’t that many new kids on the block and that is a bad sign in any business.
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The big international publishing companies are motivated by profit, rather than the love of writing.
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The well trodden road. The writer starts out, writing for themselves, thinks they could make ‘a living’ or ‘extra’ from this starts floundering around scatter shooting off enquiries gets nowhere. They square their shoulders and seek guides on ‘How to’ and wonders if the author and they live in the same world. The writer then returns to seeking our agents or publishers, either gets ignored, dismissed or ripped off. With much lower expectations writer goes ‘indy’, but at least gets their work ‘out there’. Success, or lack of it, variable.
With that it mind, the commercial book environment is somewhat based on a 4 point set-up. Writer, Agent, Publisher, Reader. Arguably the latter being the top of the pile, agents and publishers with and eye and ear to what Readerships want.
One of my more depressing experiences when researching in looking down the latest books and seeing the same plots being churned out and readers (they can’t all be phony) eulogising over them- again. BUT that’s what they want, and that’s what the publisher looks for.
A cycle not conducive to innovation.
Oh well.
My advice to a new writer. Write. Prepare to be disappointed. Prepare to think your work will never receive wide attention. But, never, never, ever give up.
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I think what some new writers submitting to agents don’t realize is that just because an agent accepts you as a client doesn’t mean that the agent will be able to sell the book to a publisher.
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I’ve told my story before, but here goes again. Certain circumstances of my life caused me to begin writing seriousl.y only in the year 2000 when I was 60 years old. I never tried to publish until I turned 70 and realized that if I ever wanted anybody to read my books, I’d better get cracking. I started querying The Termite Queen to agents, I got one personal reply saying she didn’t think she could represent a book about giant insects. I never heard from any of the others, and after four months I realized that I would be dead before I ever had any success, Self-publishing was just getting up steam, so I went that route. Not sorry, even though I’ve never gotten the following I think my material deserves. At least I got a few enthusiastic readers and some of my books are floating around out there.
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I queried my first fantasy novel in 1980, I did it directly to publishers, along with a SF novella and SF short story to the SF magazines of the day. In all cases, I received a reply via the mail, sometimes just a form letter, but sometimes a personal note as well. from some editorial assistant. (One became the head editor at TOR) Since then, publishers have shoved that job to agents, cutting their payroll. I’m sure that there are more people querying today, it is so much easier to write a book these days, but it also is so much easier to reply, so there’s no excuse for not replying. Agents, after all, are paid by the writers, not the publishers. We hire them.
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On some level, kind of, sort of get it. Agents get a ton of submissions. Everybody is writing a book these days. On the other hand, as you point out, it only takes ten seconds to send an email. Okay, maybe a minute or two, but still it just isn’t that difficult to send an email. That 2/3 of the agents you queried couldn’t bother with that shows how disrespectful the agency is to the writers it depends on. That 2/3 level of failure that you got is about equal to what I experienced the two times I’ve tried to query. And each time it happened, I swore off ever querying again. I don’t want to be a part of an industry that is so disorganized and disrespectful.
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I suspect that the underlying issue is that writers treat agents with reverence. Like they’re the anointed ones who have the power to acknowledge a lowly writer, but only if the mood strikes them.
Never Submit (smile) Never Surrender.
Their days are numbered anyway.
(I did my own query experiment, 72 agents back in 2017. It wasn’t pretty.)
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I think you’re right. But agents and publishers are no better or worse than the rest of us. And they operate in a system that seems to be irretrievably broken.
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Thanks for sharing your experience, Chuck, and your results. I’m not really surprised by your conclusion. I haven’t queried in about eight years. The last straw for me was when I sent out a query and got an auto-rejection a quarter-second later. What the…? Well, at least they were fast. And I strongly believe that authors need to consider whether an agent and traditional publishing, in general, are worth it in terms of time and cost. I have more readers, sell more books, and enjoy more profit as an indie than I did as a traditionally published author. Happy to leave that hassle and frustration behind.
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I think many of us have had similar experiences, with or without having been traditionally published. We have to manage the whole publishing process ourselves, but we don’t have to share the royalties. 🙂 Thanks for your comment, Diana!
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