More News from People I Thought I'd Never Hear From Again

[dr_pretentious]

It's increasingly common for agents to reject by non-response, rather than by sending actual rejection letters. Some do so through pure procrastination, while others will come out and say in their guidelines that rejection by non-response is their official policy.

Although it's annoying not to know whether I'm waiting in potentially fruitful suspense or already safely rejected and recycled, I've seen some of the hostile letters that agents sometimes get in response to quite professional, or even encouraging, rejections. I can sympathize with an agent who has simply had it with getting threats and name-calling when she declines to offer representation. Looking back on the years I spent teaching freshman composition, I can think of some students I whose papers I wish I could have graded by non-response.

What I haven't figured out--and it may be unknowable--is how to tell when I've been kept waiting long enough for an answer that a particular inquiry no longer bears thinking about. Consider the following chronology:

June 2006
At a pitch appointment, an agent requests a 100 page partial ms. Per her guidelines, I snailmail the partial to her within the week.

August 2006
The agent's assistant emails to say something on the order of, "We're really excited about what we see here. Please send your bio." I reply with the bio within 48 hours.

Early December 2006
After waiting the customary 3 months and a bit before nudging her, I send a two-line email to the assistant asking whether she received the bio and whether there is any news. I wish her and the agent happy holidays. No response.

Late January 2007
Because literary agenting seems to be a business with a lot of turnover at the bottom, I allow for the possibility that the assistant I've been in contact with no longer works at that agency. I make bold to send the agent herself a 2 line email wishing her a happy new year and asking whether my work is still under consideration. No response.

June 2007 (today)
The agent's assistant sends me a cordial rejection email, approximately ten months after the agency's last communication to me and almost exactly a year after the agency received the partial ms.

Now, this is an agent who is not known for representing fantasy. She includes no writers of speculative fiction on her client list, and I've never seen her name in Locus. It was surprising that she requested the ms in the first place, and it would have been even more so if she'd offered to represent me. But what surprises me most is that her assistant thought there was any point in emailing me at all by the time June rolled around again, six months after I'd already assumed rejection by non-response.

Or was I wrong, back in January, to assume I was already out of the running? Is it really possible that, a year after the partial arrived at that agency, they were still in the process of making a decision about whether to request the full ms?

I suppose I should take it as a compliment that I rated a form rejection, in this age of rejection by non-response. At least I can guess my little nudge emails came off as sufficiently professional that the assistant wasn't afraid I'd send her a nastygram in return.

I wonder if I'll ever hear back from the other four agents who've requested manuscripts.

It's at times like this that I take comfort in remembering that Jean Auel got turned down by 18 agents before she found one who wanted to represent her. And I currently have exactly as many rejection letters from agents as J.K. Rowling ever got.

Comments

[reikirock.livejournal.com]

From a proffessional view, I would send a note wishing whatever but asking if they received a confirmation within a week of a post. This is business and onwe should close a loop as soon as possible.

"In response to your request I sent x,y and z on "such a date" and am writing to confirn your receipt of this information. To wait more than a week leaves the barn door open.

I do this with inhouse notes and the like. It is not being pushy, just ensuring the communication loop was closed...

Peter

[peartreealley.livejournal.com]

Sorry to hear about the rejection. Some agents just seem to take that long. I've been told for a manuscript request, to assume up to a year, unless the agent gives you a different quote. (One of my current requests said to poke her if I don't hear back within a few weeks, for example.)

However, March 2006, I e-queried an agent. He requested the first three chapters within hours. Two days later, he requested the full. I wasn't given a time frame, but said agent had said in the request "if I can get to it this weekend, I'll have the full package," implying, I thought, a fairly quick turn around.

A couple of months later, I emailed, asking about the status of the manuscript or when I should expect to hear back (as the agent doesn't have a typical response time listed). No response. A month later, another status request. No response.

Now, this mss had been requested by a publisher as well, but I had wanted to see if I could snag an agent in the process. In July 2006, I finally decided I wanted to send it on to the waiting publisher. All the other agents I had sent to had read/rejected by then. I sent an email letting the agent know I had sent it to said publisher. He responded within the hour, apologizing, and saying that he'd get back with me ASAP.

March 2007, it's been a year. I email, asking for a status report. He apologizes again, and says he'll get back to me, ASAP.

To this day, I've gotten no response. It's been a year and a half, and yet I can't assume I've been rejected, even though I'm pretty sure I'll get rejected when he gets around to reading the manuscript. Heck, I've even revised it again in the meantime.

Waiting in limbo sucks, but some agents just have long turn-around times :(

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Hey, good to hear from you!

I've worked in "fast-paced environments," and I remember all the stress and craziness they entail. I wouldn't want to trade places with the assistant who had so much on her plate that it took her until this week to tell me what she probably knew last September.

On the other hand, suppose you had an offer on the table, an easy commission to hand to whatever agent handled the contract for you. Would the person who'd kept you waiting a year and a half, despite many assurances that a swift response was forthcoming, be on your list of agents to call? At that point, you have to wonder whether the agent can do what it takes to represent the clients s/he actually signs. Not that I'm likely to have an offer on the table anytime in the foreseeable future, but I wouldn't be inclined to take one to an agency that gave predictions about its own response time and then overshot them by months.

[peartreealley.livejournal.com]

To be fair, even Anna Genoese once said that she had requested manuscripts sitting around for up to six months before she even to pull them out and read them. The agent in my above story, I presume, still hasn't even read the rest of the novel yet. So she might not have known since last September. It's possible, maybe, that they really did just get around to it.

I hear you about the offer on the table situation, though. The agent who has had my manuscript for 15 months is pretty much written off already to me (this is also related to experiences a client-friend of mine has had with him in the meantime regarding super slow responses even to clients), but I don't see any good reason to actually pull the manuscript from him until I have another offer.

[annathepiper]

Marf, sorry to hear this particular agent is being so slow. Many sympathies!

[violet-moon25.livejournal.com]

Eeek! All this waiting must seem like torture. Your polite email nudges are a professional way to go. When I had a very busy job and always had at least twice as much on my desk as I could get to I encouraged people to call if they didn't get a response, especially if something became urgent. I was working in a very different field but I think polite questions are a good reminder.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Little nudges are encouraged, but people get prickly if you nudge them too soon. The pace of the industry is so slow, if an unpublished writer nudges a gatekeeper without waiting three months first, many people consider it Very Bad Form.

[vgnwtch.livejournal.com]

I do understand them being snowed under. That, however, is no excuse for rudeness, which is what this absolutely is. When you're in business, you get back to people, even to turn them down, and with email, it's now easier than ever to respond quickly with a form letter. Anything less is unprofessional and sloppy. The fact that it's the norm in your business doesn't excuse it.

But that's me. I have a thing about manners making the wo/man.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

The whole thing is kind of Kafkaesque. Um, in the "Before the Law" sense of the word, not the giant cockroach sense. Though if the agent woke up one morning and discovered that she'd turned into an enormous insect, that would excuse a delay in response time. In that case, the mandibles make the man.

[vgnwtch.livejournal.com]

:::Snort/Laugh:::