4 Reasons Why I Got Rejected by 70 Literary Agents
By: Kesten Harris
Tags: Self Improvement, Publishing, Inspiration, Query Letters, Writing

Photo by Helloquence on Unsplash

2016 was an interesting year for me.

I’m sure I accomplished a lot, but all I remember is typing up a new query letter every day, sending it, and waiting patiently for the inevitable rejection. It always came. Most of the time the literary agents never sent back anything at all. Those always stung a bit more.

I adopted this torturous routine because around 2015/2016 was when I finished my first novel, The Blue Barricade. My ten-year-old self had always dreamed of traditionally publishing his first book, so that was the road I chose to go down.

I knew how long, uneven, and damaged that road was before I walked down it. Everyone knew the horror stories. Unfortunately, those stories couldn’t prepare me for how soul-crushing that road ended up being.

It wasn’t just the rejection. Nope, I got numb to that after the 30th or so time. It wasn’t the fact that most of the agents never responded at all, even if that always stung. No, I think what really got to me was that pretty much all of those rejections were completely my fault.

These are the reasons why all of my queries were rejected. I hope it teaches you what not to do if you’re querying too.

1. My Big Fat Manuscript

Photo by Kiwihug on Unsplash

Not all of my queries were outright rejected (or ignored). There was one magical time when my query was somewhat accepted by an agent. She requested what’s known as a “partial.” That’s fancy agent talk for “Send the first 50 pages of your manuscript so I can decide if you’re worth my time, worm.”

Being the happy little worm that I was, I immediately sent the first 50 pages…of my 600 page manuscript. Yeah, you read that correctly. I only learned that the agent found the page count ridiculous when she announced it to all of her Twitter followers. She’s free to do that, but ouch.

Looking back, I can’t believe that 2016 Kesten unironically pitched a behemoth of a book to so many agents. I didn’t see anything wrong with it at the time. It was my first time pitching anything to anyone. No one told me that practically no agent would ever accept a manuscript of that size.

After a few days to a week of waiting for an obvious reply, the agent rejected my pitch. No hard feelings. I would have been more surprised if she’d accepted that monster. Besides, that rejection taught me so much more than all the other ones. For the first time, I knew why I had been rejected.

What I Learned: Don’t write a book with 600 pages if you’re trying to start a career.

That experience taught me more about the industry’s standards than I’d ever been told. I understood how the approval process worked because I made it halfway through. That instance was still the furthest I’d ever gotten to being accepted by an agent.

After that experience, I cut my massive manuscript into two novels, The Blue Barricade and The Gray Raid. I tried pitching TBB to more agents in the hope that its shorter length would make my pitches more enticing. Unfortunately, there was more to my countless rejections than just the length of my manuscript.

2. My Lack of Direction

Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash

I didn’t know what I was doing. Plain and simple. I was barely 19 when I wrote those letters. What did I know about the writing industry? I swear that every time I wrote a query letter, it was completely different from the last one. Not in a good way.

I didn’t even know what I was calling my book at the time. It’s called The Blue Barricade now, but I didn’t settle on that name until after I’d finished querying. I believe that the first title I ever gave it was Rebellion in the Stars.

It’s not a terrible title. It could work for another book, but not for the one I wrote. Most of my queries were about that book and its 600 pages. It wasn’t until I’d cut the book in half that I decided to reinvent my pitch. I renamed the new book The Explorer: Martians and Men to reflect its new identity as a much shorter book. I submitted a few queries under that name, but I wouldn’t be writing this if they’d gotten accepted.

The contents of my letters changed as well. Despite reading countless articles on the subject, I wasn’t sure what a good query letter looked like. No one really does because 90% of them are rejected. The ones that got accepted worked for the agent who accepted them, but there’s no telling how well they would have worked on everyone else.

With how often I switched up my query letter formula, there’s no telling how many of the ones I sent out were actually good or bad. What if numbers 20–30 were good and the rest were awful? I’ll never know because it’s surprisingly hard to get feedback from an agent.

It didn’t help that every query should already be completely different. You’re supposed to personalize each query letter to let the agent know that you want them and not just what they can do for you. I agree with that, but it’s easier said than done. It’s no wonder why all those factors messed with my idea of what worked and what didn’t.

What I Learned: You can’t be focusless. You can’t just come up with an idea or two and recklessly act upon them. You need to have a plan from the very beginning. Know yourself, know what you’re doing, and know what you’re trying to accomplish. If I’d settled on a consistent way to write queries from the beginning, I might have been slightly more successful.

By the time I knew all of this…I’d already given up on querying. After everything I’d put The Blue Barricade through, I wasn’t sure if it or I could handle another round of querying. I chose self-publishing so that I could finally get the dang book out there.

Maybe I should have queried more. With an actual direction, I could have achieved what I’d been trying to do all along. I believe that querying was a failure, but there’s always a lesson to be learned from failure. And I do love learning.

3. My Inexperience

Photo by Alvaro Reyes on Unsplash

New writers are always told that they should know their audience and the market. That essentially just translates to “Know what people want to read, and then write that.” Maybe I’m an idiot, but I never thought there was an easy way to accomplish that. There’s no all-knowing book you can read to magically understand what people want. You’ll figure it out with enough research, but that’s a whole other topic.

I didn’t know the market back then, and I barely knew my audience. I write stories that I would like, which means that I’m apparently targeting guys in their twenties who love Monster Hunter, dynamic characters, and cycling.

I didn’t know anything about the world of querying. That’s why I made so many mistakes. I educated myself beforehand, but there’s no education like experience. That’s why I can speak so confidently about all of this now. I didn’t know any of it back then.

If I tried querying today, I’d do everything differently. I know more about the wacky world of writing now that I’ve experienced it. In the end, it’s really all about experience. Someone who’s read about the horrors of war and someone who’s lived through them are two completely different people.

What I Learned: Don’t be afraid to get experience. If you’re unsure of whether you’re doing the right thing or not, do it anyway. Get yourself out there and learn on the job. That’s the only way you can be sure.

Don’t wait for the failures to stack up before you start learning. Every single failure holds wisdom. The first time you fail, look back on the experience and understand what went wrong before you progress.

4. I Didn’t Want It Enough

Photo by Thomas Griesbeck on Unsplash

Sorry, but that section header is a bit misleading. Of course I wanted to be traditionally published. Who doesn’t want their work in bookstores all over the country? It’s pretty much what every author is working towards.

The problem was that I wasn’t dedicated to the result. I hated writing query letters. There were a few reasons why:

I wasn’t good at it . This whole article is just me listing all the reasons why I was awful at making these things. Every time I wrote a new letter, I was frustrated. I knew I was doing it wrong but I kept at it anyway. That only made me hate doing it more.

. This whole article is just me listing all the reasons why I was awful at making these things. Every time I wrote a new letter, I was frustrated. I knew I was doing it wrong but I kept at it anyway. That only made me hate doing it more. I had doubts . While I was pitching, I was also wondering if I’d have better luck with self-publishing. I was constantly comparing the two, wondering which would be better for my book. I was stuck between two worlds while only actively pursuing one. If you’re chasing a goal, the best way to achieve it is by being wholly dedicated to it.

. While I was pitching, I was also wondering if I’d have better luck with self-publishing. I was constantly comparing the two, wondering which would be better for my book. I was stuck between two worlds while only actively pursuing one. If you’re chasing a goal, the best way to achieve it is by being wholly dedicated to it. I wasn’t making progress. I personally viewed the querying process as a waste of time. The only ounce of progress I ever made was the partial that got rejected. I used to torture myself by reading about people who got accepted after only 17 rejections or how they’ve received multiple requests for partials. In comparison, I sent around 70 queries and could barely get one request. Don’t compare yourself to others. All it does is make you miserable.

What I Learned: I’m not querying again unless I’m certain that it’s what I want. It’s a process that requires a lot of dedication and focus. It’s not something that can be done half-heartedly.

You understand what I’ve gone through now. The countless failures that I endured while querying. The lack of progress that described my life throughout all of 2016. So now you’re probably wondering something.

Was It Worth It?

If I could snap my big purple Thanos fingers and erase that period of my life, would I?

Heck no.

A wise man once said, “I educated myself beforehand, but there’s no education like experience.” As you can see from the rest of the article, being rejected taught me a lot about the writing industry and about life in general.

I suppose that I could have learned all of that by reading enough articles, but it wouldn’t have stuck with me. Experience has a way of super gluing lessons to your brain. I’ll never forget how querying made me feel, and I’m glad. More than anything, I’m glad that writing this article may have prevented someone from getting rejected 100 times before they learned anything.