I’ve always considered myself to be a fairly persistent–even downright stubborn–person. I just found out I’m a piker.
Friday night, I listened to this interview with Elana Johnson. She racked up 188 rejections for her (now published) novel. But you only need one agent to love it and find the editor who will love it, too. Elana Johnson sent 189 queries and sold her novel.
Of course, to be fair, she was also getting a better percentage of requests for full or partial manuscripts than I have. That’s at least partly due to writing a much better query letter. Something I still have to work on–and I plan to work on it with the help of her free e-book, FROM THE QUERY TO THE CALL (available on her website).
But it’s also clear to me that I just have not been sending out enough queries. So far, I’ve averaged around thirty to thirty-five queries on my novels. Not nearly enough.
Okay, so part of that is because I stop querying the previous book when the next is ready to go out. That’s something I may have to rethink, especially as I finish up revisions on BLOOD WILL TELL. I mean, with a few exceptions, BWT and MAGE STORM won’t even be going to the same agents. They’re not the same kind of books or aimed at similar audiences. BWT is an adult urban fantasy/paranormal romance (I think I’m going to query it as a paranormal romance, this go round.) and MS is a middle grade fantasy.
But that’s still only part of it. If I query a novel for an average of one year, I ought to be able to send out at least three queries a week. The problem is the periods in which I don’t send out queries, because I’m going to revise the query letter or the synopsis or, like now, because I’m contemplating a revision to the work itself. Then I don’t send out any queries for a month or more. Not good.
The biggest problem, though, is researching agents. This is where the real procrastination creeps in.
New resolution (mid-year, if you like): Send out way more queries than I have been.
Meredith Mansfield, Author 
You’re correct about how many queries to send out. I hate to say this and hate even more to be right, especially since I will be having three novels to send out in a few months, but 35 is almost zero. If you get what I mean.
The number of queries to send has been a bane to writers since there was such a thing as writers and publishers. Some sell whether quickly but there’s a huge number of authors who sent out over a hundred queries before finding the right one. But are you also sending them to publishers? You don’t need agents with all of them and some will take a look no matter what they say in the guidelines.
And as you probably know, double check any agent that says yes. Don’t take them just because you feel it’s been too long… a warning for me too. 🙂
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Yeah, like I said, I’ve been a piker. More queries.
Part of that procrastination thing is that I check the agents out before I even send the query.
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Hey, wait a minute. Is that really procrastination? I guess it can be depending on your motive… I know about that. 🙂
But doing something you should do is probably wise not procrastination.
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Yes, well, DOING the research isn’t procrastination. Knowing that I need to do the research and then putting it off, is.
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