Anyone who reads this blog religiously will know that last year I went query crazy. I sent out queries to agents as if my life depended on it. I tallied that I had a 5% success rate. Lower than most published authors feel is acceptable. I have sense completely changed my query process and dynamic.
Although I have not completely accepted the advice of JA Konrath on queries (his advice found here) I am closer to it than last summer. Konrath advices not sending a SASE, they just make it easier to be rejected and do nothing for the author's self-esteem, and he believes that it is necessary to differentiate submissions from the pack. His query packet was stylized printed and shipped like a book jacket with an author blurb, review, front jacket intro etc. As I said, I'm not as keen as he in casting off the cloak of conventional structure, but I'm moving that way.
Secondly, my query letter has changed significantly. I posted the query here last year and since then it has evolved into a much shorter much more pithy missive. Still have the word count, still have the genre, but I read a Writer's Digest article about successful queries that truly hit home. Whet the agent's appetite, it said, and leave them wanting more. Just give them enough to know that you're professional, polished, have a finished manuscript, and are in the genre they represent.
The reason I bring all this up is that as I peruse publishing blogs, I'm amazed by the number of queries that agents get. Reading about Janet Reid on her blog, Nathan Bransford and Jessica Faust, I realize that my even getting a 5% success rate was pretty spectacular. Jessica Faust's post this morning mentions that she has over 360 new email in her inbox, all of them queries. She posts this about every two or three weeks. She plows through them in that same amount of time then a new batch comes in. In my office if I get 36 emails I'm extremely busy, 360 is mind numbing. The same dynamic is common for all the other agents.
What's the point? In the famous words of Jesse Jackson on SNL, the point is moot. There is no point. I'm just amazed that my queries got picked up at all. Like Colonel Cathcart would say, "it's a real feather in my cap." Then again, I'm still not published so "that's a real black eye."
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