As many readers might know, I was trying a ‘test batch’ strategy with my queries this time around. I think I have been thwarted.
I’m hearing crickets. Predominantly that is all I’m hearing. So, do I rewrite my query? Do I sigh and say my idea isn’t marketable? Or do I take the brakes off, and see what happens?
I decided to take the brakes off.
This might lead me to a whole bunch of ‘no’ landing in my inbox. Ok, I can deal with that. What I’m wondering is have my queries been stuck in a good many ‘maybe’ piles or am I running into a wall of ‘silent nos’?
That’s one other way a ‘silent no’ disserves the querying author, it breeds doubt. Readers might say, but the agency has an ‘if you haven’t heard from us in x days’ line on their website. In many cases, there are posted deadlines where a query should be considered ‘dead’ but not in every case. Sometimes finding that information is a hunt. Plus there are times when the agents are so overwhelmed that they may not reach your query within four months. Shocking, I know.
This isn’t the situation to throw all caution, and queries to the wind, so I won’t do that. However, I do have a lot of research that points in other directions. So, rather than waiting for all those responses to arrive, when they might never do so, I have decided to put more queries out there.
Good decision, bad decision? I don’t know. But, at least, it is a decision.
3 responses to “In the Trenches: Less Waiting. More Querying.”
Wondering the same thing myself! This query has been edited and rewritten and critiqued and workshopped so many times…is it simply time to move on?
And yes, crickets from agents are a tremendous disservice to writers, and ultimately makes all agents’ query inbox larger than it needs to be since we simply don’t know what to fix/change/do.
I wonder if there is a feature from Query Tracker that is contributing to the shift toward the ‘silent rejection’. There is in Query Tracker a default setting that will kill a query over 120 days old, independent of anyone looking at it or not.
Hmmm… I need to go mull over this idea. There might be a post in it, there might also be trouble in a post like that.
Good trouble? Bad trouble? Who know’s.
I’ve missed that default…not good! I’m inclined to agree with you there.