McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Length
Aakaakaak:
TBH, once I've written things out I won't be sending to Jennifer Jackson. At least not with much hope. Wrong Genre. (see? staying with your main point.)
She's probably more flooded with requests than others due to her popularity.
Kali:
Jessica Faust of BookEnds receives around 50 query letters a day.
Nathan Bransford of Curtis Brown gets around 125 a week (going by his "6,000 - 7,000 queries a year" quote, and that was in 2007).
In February of 2010, Janet Reid claimed to have rejected 50 query letters in ONE HOUR.
How many more do you want to hear from? The field is PACKED with would-be authors writing hundreds and hundreds of query letters. Do you really think I'm wrong about this? Or do you just want me to be because your book breaks a lot of the "what agents want" advice? All I'm saying is don't HAND them reasons to reject you.
Unless you (the universal 'you', directed toward the lurker who hasn't posted an opinion yet) happen to write urban fantasy. ;) In that case, please make every mistake in the book. Thin out the competition for me. Thanks!
Aakaakaak:
Um....I was....erm....agreeing with you.....
and adding that the fewer query letters someone gets the fewer rejections they need to send out...
...and I'm writing poli-sci fic. Nothing fantastical or supernatural. Completely out of her realm from what I hear.
Kali:
--- Quote from: aakaakaak on May 27, 2010, 07:11:33 PM ---Um....I was....erm....agreeing with you.....
and adding that the fewer query letters someone gets the fewer rejections they need to send out...
...and I'm writing poli-sci fic. Nothing fantastical or supernatural. Completely out of her realm from what I hear.
--- End quote ---
Ah...
Well then...
Okay.
I wasn't trying to sound snotty with the question, it was an honest query if you thought I was wrong or wanted me to be wrong. I read a lot of writing advice blogs and threads, and the number of people who utterly refuse to believe writing is as competitive as it is simply beggars the imagination. I had to interrupt a thread where people had generally agreed that the more popular agents get a lot of queries, maybe a couple of hundred a month.
Maybe I should have let them persist in their happy ignorance.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
There is a reason why my 470kword Christian-mythos end of the world fantasy is not a thing I am trying to sell. (Actually, there's also the reason that it was mostly planned out between 1996 and 1998 and it's set in a very pre-9/11 world.) Even thought it would split neatly into three, four, or indeed anywhere up to nine volumes.
While not handing agents "this is unmarketable because it does not fit the market" reasons is a good plan, so is not handing agents "this is unmarketable because it looks like a generic rehash written solely with an eye to the market that does not have any actual orginality". If there's a middle path between that particular Scylla and Charybdis, it's not an obvious one, particularly in terms of how much gets left out if you sum up a novel of any lenght into a couple of paragraphs of elevator pitch.
Knowing that successful, major-award-winning novelists with careers and many books published still find the elevator pitch hellishly agonising is a comfort of sorts, but not that much of one. So is having heard publishing professionals talk about the publishing process at conventions, in that at least I am sure it would take a deliberate effort for me to write something as unsellably bad as some of the things I've heard mentioned.
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