Another Writer's Generous Share

The process of querying literary agents is a long and tedious one. Mainly because so few of them respond; but also because the rejections (if you are lucky enough to receive an actual rejection) are often form letters, cold and impersonal. When a writer gets an agent to request a full or even a partial manuscript because their interest is piqued by the query, it feels like Christmas! It's a lonely and hugely time consuming process, and it is easy to get discouraged.

In my reserach this morning, I found the webpage of another writer who shared her experience, and she has just signed with an agent. It is so well written, so generous and supportive, that I wanted to share it here:

One Writer's Journey to Getting her novel Published

The entire website is interesting, but for the purposes of queries, here are her stats:

I had a relatively poor response rate. For those who don’t know, it’s not unusual to never get a response from agents. I got quite a lot of silence. I ended up with several requests, though the reception was hardly overwhelming. For the record, here are the numbers:

75 queries sent

2 partial requests, rejected

1 full, rejected

1 partial that turned into a full, rejected

1 partial that turned into a full, that turned into a revise-and-resubmit, that turned into another revise-and-resubmit, that turned into an offer of representation