Goodreads reviews for Why Are We Waiting?: The Logic, Urgency, and Promise of Tackling Climate Change
It would be so nice if we could choose our agent -- the best one out there in the whole wide world for us -- send her the query and get a quick yes from her.
This is almost too much success for me to handle. The (goddess)agent asked for no rewrites or adjustments. I am SO LUCKY...
Personally I'd have a mailmerge document set up with a preset list of form rejections so when we get a 'NO' we know which kind of 'NO' it is....also it wouldn't take any extra time on the Agents part. All you'd have to do is select why you rejected (you already know why because you thought it) and the mailmerge does the rest.
.....you could simply send back a number that correlates to a reason and they can look it up on your website.
ooo yes then it could start an industry standand....so if your query is getting mainly 8's it could just need a litle tweaking...3's and it needs a rewrites.
Might take a bit of heat off of agents too....impersonal but informative feedback in a single digit...Form Rejection 2.0.....=0)
I think one of the biggest reasons well-written queries get rejected is the author does not know how to hone in on the conflict in their novel. Conflict, or the set-up, is the trigger that makes me pull out the credit card to buy a new novel - I'm sure it's the same for agents. Especially when they read hundreds of queries every week. I can imagine they all bleed together into one big blur after a while.
Congrats to you GhostFolk - way too awesome. And I too love the eHarmony idea -- that would be wonderful!
LOL...one more reminder just how serendipitous this business is. I'm firmly convinced that I'm published now as much due to stubbornness, luck, timing and, did I say luck? as anything. It was my stubborn nature that kept me trying, but it was luck and timing that found me my agent, luck and timing that had my manuscript in front of the right editor at the right time, luck and timing that had my first erotic romance hit a market searching for that kind of book.
Oh geeze... e-harmony! A dating service for agents and authors. I suppose that would be the P&E site. I do love the explination of "Not for me." Thanks.
It seems the last people to get any consideration are the very people who create the business in the first place--the writers.
But outside of that mega-genre, you do see truly new story ideas pop up from time to time. Now, if you zoom out to a general enough level, all stories can either be classified as a Quest or a...whatever. But even plotwise, mysteries, thrillers, suspense, non-fiction, even literary have been coming upwith some original ideas of late.
I agree. That one where the murderer is dead, killing people from beyond the grave with computerized boobytraps he set up before he died--that's pretty darned original--the dead murderer--really dead, with no paranormal elements.
FBI agent: "That weapon is an 1860's era musket. Firearms this old do not have to be registered. From what we can tell from the ballistics evidence--and we had to call in a historian to get that--the killer uses several such muskets, all of them which will be legally unregistered. It's the one advantage of using a waepon that gives you only onle shot before having to reload. it's untraceable."
Actually, who sez? I mean, yes, there are legions of weak writers, wannabe writers, people who dream they are writers trying to get agents much too early in the process. But the number of excellent writers who have done their homework, studied, written a manuscript, put it in the drawer, then written at least one other one, one that is great and original, one that makes their writing group all agree, this is the one -- those writers are rare. Because it takes time. Years.
Thanks, Anons--but if all that is true, why do they ignore even pro writers, sitting on our mss. for months? There's only a handful of NYT bestsellers, but bookstores are filled with all types of books. Agents should show a little courtesy or else be closed for submissions. You'd think no one knew how to read anymore but teens!
Why bother? Why wouldn't you bother? If you're in the querying stage, it's going to take you all of ten minutes to check the blogging agent's sub requirements and zip off an e-query. The blogging agents are only slightly busier than non-blogging agents, all things considered, and the bloggers obviously care about connecting with the writer community - a big plus is my books. What do you have to lose by querying an agent who blogs?
I agree with ANON 2:35: I second that motion--we need more mystery/suspense info! SO sick of YA--what will these teens read when they grow up? There's more to life than romantic vampire & werewolf stories...get real!
"I’ve talked before on the blog about insurance adjustor mysteries. How, to the best of my knowledge, there’s never been one published ..."
I'm working on a YA novel myself - 14 year old girl starts a band with her friends, has adventures, learns about life, grows up, etc. Not a vampire in the bunch. (Although I'm very tempted to introduce a table full of totally lame Twilight geeks that sit together in the lunchroom - just out of pure meanness :)