SLUSH PILE BLUES
HOW MANY REJECTIONS add up
to a realization that you’ll probably never get an agent? Conventional wisdom
tells us to stick with the query letters even when there’s a floodtide of
rejections. Even after months or years of submitting to publishers and agents.
I recently completed a
coming-of-age manuscript and sent over forty query letters to agents (only
those with an interest in young adult novels). If you take the word of agents,
only the rare query receives a positive response. As soon as my rejections
arrive, I discard them. However, this one was still in my trash and it’s
typical of the emails I get: “We receive over 300 manuscripts a week and can
only take on a handful of new writers every year.” (Vicki Le Feuvre of the
Darley Anderson agency)
This means a handful of
accepted writers from 15,600 queries. It’s to the advantage of agents that
their email accounts hardly accommodate the overflow of queries. That we
writers continue to query in spite of devastating odds gives them a plethora of
choices. This is not meant to disparage hard working agents. They have a
difficult function in the best of times, and this isn’t the best of times for
books, especially novels. Publishers who are feeling the heat of competition
from movies, Netflix, YouTube, etc., pass along the stress to agents.
The internet is packed with
advice for us writers to keep querying until we get an agent. Don’t self
publish. However, the odds are overwhelming that I’ll never get an agent. Given
the advances in computer technology, publish on demand (POD) provides a way to
bypass having an agent. The logical choice for me is not whether to query agents, but
whether to self publish.
POD has the potential to
breathe fresh air into the industry. Whether this will challenge traditional
publishing remains to be seen. However, as insistent warnings against
self-publishing grow strident, it sounds like traditional publishing is
worried.
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