Query Weary

I’ve been sending queries for eleven weeks now. Those first few weeks were so amazing—I had such hope. Then there were the middle weeks where I knew I wanted to be published and I was pretty hopeful. Now—this last week or two—I’m still doing it, but it’s getting harder. I do it because I have to, because I want to make my dream come true. The hope is waning, though. It takes more effort to sit at my computer and start the agent search.

 

Part of my problem may be that the more queries I send, the fewer agents there are left. For those of you who aren’t on your own query quest (or who are already published, etc.), there are rules to sending queries:

Rule 1: You can’t query more than one agent in each agency. If the agent you query thinks your work is right for someone else in the agency, they pass it on to that agent.

Rule 2: If you’ve been rejected by an agent, you’ve been rejected by their whole agency for that particular MS.

Rule 3: (This one’s a DUH.) You only query the agents who are interested in what you’ve written. For me, that’s contemporary YA. So I only query the agents interested in contemporary YA. If they just say YA, that counts.

Rule 4: You can send your query to the same agency/agent again…but not for a long while. Like, a year or more.

I’m feeling the weight of these rules more and more lately. Why? Not every agency is interested in YA. I came across at least three today that made no mention of YA, one of which wasn’t even interested in adult fiction. Have I queried all the agents interested in YA yet? Probably not, but I have to dig and dig to discover new ones. I started off with the list of agents I sent my last query, which was a few years ago and (obviously) wasn’t successful. Once I’d gone through that (short) list, I started using Writer’s Market’s online tool to find them. Then came Twitter. You follow this agent? Then maybe you should follow this other agent! THANKS, TWITTER. Even Twitter’s running out of ideas now. I’m thinking next week I should try Query Tracker to see what that gets me. I’ve also considered ransacking my YA library and seeing if the acknowledgements include agents I haven’t already queried.

Still, with queries stats like these

·   1 full request (a few weeks ago with no word since)

·   1 partial request (a couple of months ago with no word since)

·   19 rejections

·   65 sent queries (including those already rejected, those with requests, and the 11 others that I sent over eight weeks ago that are surely no-reply rejections)

you can see why the publishing future of FOR PARIS, FOR LOVE is looking bleak. There will come a point when I’ll have to say, “FOR PARIS, FOR LOVE, you’ve had you try. It’s time to give over this quest to WORLD’S EDGE.” Am I there now? Maybe not just yet. But soon.