Query Score Card update
Nov. 20th, 2009 03:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
megwritesGot a super nice rejection in the inbox last night on one of the two fulls that's still circulating around. The agent said she loved a lot of things about it, but just couldn't put her full passion behind it.
This brings the score card to:
Requests - 2 (1 full, 1 partial)
Rejections - 8
Timed Out - 6
Still Pending - 0
Which means that round two is hanging by a thread. I don't intend to do another round of querying for this novel if it bats zero again, because I feel that I've revised and edited and reworked the story as much as I can. I look back on it and I still am not sure what I could change that significantly that would make the novel different enough to deserve re-querying it.
I've gotten a lot of "I loved so much about it, but..." which tells me that there's something good in the novel, and maybe some of that "I just can't give it enough passion" is more of a "I have no idea how I'd sell this sucker."
Of course, I could be telling myself that to feel better, but hey. Until someone tells me different, I may as well preserve what's left of my self esteem, right?
Plus, the pool of agents who even want to deal with fantasy is quite limited and I do think in this market there may not be anyone willing to take the chance on an unpublished author with no record.
So should it bat zero, I will start really researching and considering plans to podcast/post the novel. Because I want the story out there and I pretty much knew I wouldn't make any money on it to begin with. Thoughts anyone?
This brings the score card to:
Requests - 2 (1 full, 1 partial)
Rejections - 8
Timed Out - 6
Still Pending - 0
Which means that round two is hanging by a thread. I don't intend to do another round of querying for this novel if it bats zero again, because I feel that I've revised and edited and reworked the story as much as I can. I look back on it and I still am not sure what I could change that significantly that would make the novel different enough to deserve re-querying it.
I've gotten a lot of "I loved so much about it, but..." which tells me that there's something good in the novel, and maybe some of that "I just can't give it enough passion" is more of a "I have no idea how I'd sell this sucker."
Of course, I could be telling myself that to feel better, but hey. Until someone tells me different, I may as well preserve what's left of my self esteem, right?
Plus, the pool of agents who even want to deal with fantasy is quite limited and I do think in this market there may not be anyone willing to take the chance on an unpublished author with no record.
So should it bat zero, I will start really researching and considering plans to podcast/post the novel. Because I want the story out there and I pretty much knew I wouldn't make any money on it to begin with. Thoughts anyone?
no subject
Date: 2009-11-20 09:17 pm (UTC)The year after you sell one novel tends to be consumed with "OMG OMG How am I going to do this again?" -- this happened for me even though I had written four novels in the past, and even though I'm a pretty quick writer when I really put my mind to it. A trunk novel can be a useful thing to have.
But then, publishers aren't nearly so reluctant to publish previously-published-online material as they were, so it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing to post or podcast it.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-21 07:23 pm (UTC)