I am taking a summer break from submissions. The pile has grown way up above my ears, and I'd like to be able to catch up on everything, and requested manuscripts, AND client work. So...
From August 1st to September 1st, I am not accepting queries. I'll update this on the submission page as well.
What will happen if you query me during the month of August?
Easy. You'll get a nice auto-response and the query will be moved to the trash. Please feel free to resubmit in September if you still think I'm a good fit for your project.
Hi again. Finally broke through the rest of my June queries yesterday. I got a little behind because of a vacation around the holiday, but I'm just about caught up to my 2 weeks response time. I'm sure I'll be behind again by next week.
At least we spoke in May, my volume was down, with only about 261 queries. This month we're back up a bit. But my request rate is lower again. Mostly I have been really busy, and my list is pretty full, so I'm pickier again.
Total: 297
Requested: 3
Categories of Requested: All YA - 2 contemporary, 1 dystopian/fantasy
Queries with attachments: only 2!
A word on that last point: Please don't send attachments unless I ask for it. I'm just not downloading something I'm not interested in.
AUTHOR/ILLUSTRATORS: A few of you have been pasting images in the body of the email. This also slows me down a lot. One email was so heavy loaded with big files, I could barely scroll down. Annoying. I ask for a link to your online portfolio and website. This is easier.
Two other weird syndromes struck my slush pile this month. First, I got a few of those queries from third parties, that is where the person sending the query is NOT the person who wrote the book. So either authors are hiring someone to do this for them (are you kidding? don't do that), or they had some weird manager on board. One of them looked to be some a small-time film agent of sorts. Basically, I auto-reject these. I want to hear from the real person.
The other one was a string of queries that were all three shades to the left of believable. Like with a little more imagination they could have been spam. They all tended to be adult non-fiction of various kinds (self-help...dating advice...health...), none of which I really represent. And they were ALL formatted exactly the same way. I'm willing to think that maybe there was a batch of people who were all following advice from a single source. Either way, it seems to have stopped, so I'm not worried. But I definitely got a whiff of spam.
And otherwise, it was a lot of the usual tropes. I've been noticing a lot of school plays, Egyptian myth, Mayan lore, etc. Tons and tons of teens with varying degrees of psychic abilities. Nothing that was exciting me all that much, but...we'll keep going!
Some months ago, when we debated about authors notifying agents of another offer of representation, some comments were made about the speed of things when there's real interest. That if an agent doesn't respond immediately, read immediately, and offer immediately, they must not really be that interested.
The same argument has been made with agents sending projects out on submission. The really big deals, with large offers of money, all happen overnight. Those editors who manage to pull big pre-empts together over weekends...those are the exciting stories you guys all love, because you think that's how it needs to happen for a project to get buzz.
Well, guess what? That's all crap.
We announced some great news yesterday for one of my clients, Kiera Cass, who just had her ENTIRE TRILOGY picked up by HarperCollins, in quite a nice deal. (Read: not a small potatoes one.) Before you get any farther, watch Kiera's celebratory video announcement. It's awesome. Then keep reading below.
Yesterday I got to thinking about Kiera's process, both in getting signed by me, and then landing this amazing deal. So I looked back at her timeline.
Kiera queried me on February 8th. Since I read on schedule and in order, I read her query on February 26th, and requested her manuscript. I didn't get to it immediately, but when I did I read it quickly. Then I thought about it for a few days. I then passed to Caren for a second read on March 18th. She loved it too. I emailed Kiera and asked to set up a phone call on March 22nd, wherein I offered representation. (That was my birthday, actually.) Kiera had another agent interested, but picked me a few days later. (Yay!)
So that was a full 6 weeks minimum from query to offer. We then revised for a month. And I sent the project out in early May. We settled a deal in mid-June, after the standard few weeks of editors reading, BEA happening right in the middle, my bugging people, editors getting me great feedback, taking things to committee, etc.
None of this happened overnight, and yet...an amazing project was just bought by an editor who is ecstatic about it. No one is less than enthused. And the offer didn't disappoint.
What's the lesson? Contrary to popular belief, speed isn't everything. Things can happen right on schedule, according to the usual timelines, and still have wonderfully happy endings. There's a reason I say how long things take for me to read. I need that time. Editors need their time too. There's a lot of backstage activity that needs to happen.
So next time someone tells you that an agent is only interested if they get back to you quickly, or if an editor doesn't offer immediately, tell them they're an idiot.
Another month, another stat blog post. I'm clearly a little farther behind schedule than I'd like to be also. But most notable in May was the drop in volume. It looks like it's perked back up now in mid-June, but...May is a mystery. Here are the full stats:
Total: 261
Requested: 9
Categories of Requested: 2 picture books, 1 middle-grade fantasy, 2 contemporary YA, 1 paranormal YA, 1 dystopian YA, 1 YA fantasy, 1 adult non-fiction
Queries with attachments: 10
So compared to last month, I got about 100 fewer queries. That's a big drop. Where did people go? I will say that there are 166 queries in the queue for June so far, so I should be back up to the 300+ level for this month. Yay.
Still, my request rate was up again. So qualitatively, things seemed better. And I had a few referrals of manuscripts that I requested as well, which don't really count as slush pile submissions.
Otherwise, I don't think there was anything truly notable worth mentioning. The usual array of misspellings, calling me the wrong name, derivative books...
So I almost hate to say this, even though I just tweeted it, but my volume of queries has been down significantly so far in May. I'm noticing this more because of the March and April Query Stats posts--I've been gathering up the May submissions as well. My numbers just don't compare to April.
When these things happen I actually get a little paranoid. Where are the projects going? Are people choosing not to query me? Are my agent colleagues elsewhere seeing things that I want to see also? Did I do something wrong? Is my name not getting out enough places?
Or is it something else? Something in the water? Some subliminal psychological undercurrents? Something in the annual life-cycle of the writer species?
Someone suggested that maybe all the NaNoWriMo novels dried up. Or maybe there's a misconception that publishing slows down in the summer, so people we're rushing their projects out the door for quick sales. (Which is a silly way to approach this anyway.)
But you tell me: do you think there's any logic to why some months are heavier than others?
And while I'm at it...send me stuff! Good stuff. You know what I'm talking about. Right?
Elana Roth