Queries this year: Approximately 8,000
Partials requested: 49 (4 of which I have not yet received)
Full manuscripts requested: 18 (3 of which were requested after reading the partials)
Number of new clients signed: 5
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Queries this year: Approximately 8,000
Holy cow!
That about says it.
You wonder where she finds the time to do the rest of her job. You wonder when she finds time to eat, for that matter.
You can eat and read at the same time! (I have experiential proof.)
I know, but…that’s approx 23 queries a day (22.7, to be exact–someone left out a SASE), assuming you work 7 days a week.
That’s…daunting.
yes, but can you eat, read, and walk to Mordor at the same time?
I might be able to, but I don’t want to get crumbs on the treadmill. *g*
It’s the sleeping and reading at the same time that she’s still getting the hang of. 😉
Nonsense. You just put the manuscript under your pillow. It’s just like studying in college. Heh.
Awesome!
My, god! You actually receive 23 queries for representation a day?
Holy Hannah, that is a Quantity of Queries!
Out of curiosity — what percent of those are obviously “no” based on poor grammar, punctuation or style in the language of the query?
(Such an answer might give hope to those of us who know what past participles and comma splices are.)
I don’t know exactly — and a person would have to make outright errors (not just typos) for me to make that a deciding factor. I would guess, though, that more than half of the queries fall into categories that make a “no” decision “easy” — for example, they are in an area I don’t represent, the writing in the query is full of mistakes and errors, etc. and so forth.
Very interesting!
What I’m really curious about is the number of fulls (18) of which it looks like only 2 were requested after reading the partial. Are those other fulls just straight off queries, then? Or am I reading it wrong? Did they come from somewhere else, like previously published authors who contacted you directly or people with contracts in hand looking for an agent?
As for daunting odds, I think Teresa Nielsen Hayden said it best in her Slushkiller post:
“Aspiring writers are forever asking what the odds are that they’ll wind up in category #14. That’s the wrong question. If you’ve written a book that surprises, amuses, and delights the readers, and gives them a strong incentive to read all the pages in order, your chances are very good indeed. If not, your chances are poor.”
Of course, I’m pretty sure everyone thinks they’ve written a delightful book, otherwise they wouldn’t have written the thing.
Oops! Where the quote says “category #14,” read “published” instead. I forgot that the exact text doesn’t really work out of context. 😛
Queries this year: Approximately 8,000
Oh my *gawd*. *collapses under the weight of that, and they’re not even mine to read*!
Hey. You have a comic book to write! What are you doing here?!
Procrastinating, obviously. 🙂
Missing Partials
Were any of those missing requests for partials very recent? Just making sure I don’t have a missing email/spam issue.
Re: Missing Partials
Uh, my wink is missing…
I’m not signed, and those odds just made me want to cry.
Seconded.
Wow. I’m really proud of myself for being one of the 49, even if I wasn’t one of the 18.
😀
Wondering two things–one, were any of the five new clients from the three fulls from partials? And two, would you say, based on talking with colleagues (both your agency and elsewhere) that this is a pretty average amount of queries to partials, partials to fulls, fulls to representation? Thanks for the info!
the odds
From Josephine Damian:
Actually, it’s worse. I read somewhere that only half of the people who get chosen for agent representation get their first book published. Just because an agent likes your work doesn’t mean they can get the editors they know to give it a chance within a certain narrow, time frame. A book that might have sold one year might be passed on the next year, or year before if the market wasn’t “right” in those years. Timing is a big factor.
http://josephinedamian.blogspot.com
Re: the odds
I’m not sure where you heard that but my personal odds have certainly been much better than 50% on debut novels.
That’s A LOT of queries. Hopefully next year, I’ll be one of those new clients! :*) I am revamping and editing heavily, definitely polishing this novel to where it needs to be. Then after my betas read it and make suggestions, I’ll look over it again and change or add a few things and begin querying.
~Tyhitia
http://obfuscationofreality.blogspot.com/
six hundredths of one percent? What a success rate. I think that equates roughly to slightly better than a snowball’s chance in Hell.