Rejection Still Sucks

By Angela Henry

About ten years ago, I wrote a column for an ezine called You Should Write! I happened to be going through some old email correspondence the other day and ran across one of the columns I wrote about writers and rejection. I was surprised at how timely what I wrote was even today as I find myself in a similar situation as I was almost a decade ago. I decided to post the column for anyone who may also be going through the submission process. And although I'm referring to agent submissions in this column, the same advice can be used for publisher submissions as well.

Taking the Sting out of Rejection

by

Angela Henry

Ah, I remember it well. Everyday when I got home from work I would eagerly approach the mailbox. Why? Well, I wasn’t expecting a love letter nor was I eager to look at what bills had come. I was looking for responses to the dozens of query letters I’d sent out to agents regarding my masterpiece. Did I get responses? Most definitely. Were they what I was expecting? Not at all! Form letter after form letter, some nice and others not so nice, all saying what amounted to the same thing. Thanks, but no thanks.

Rejection sucks! It can also hurt. No writer wants to endure rejection. It can make even the most confident and talented writers doubt themselves. But rejection is a reality that every writer must be prepared for. No matter how well written your work may be, you are going to experience rejection. However, you can take some of the sting out of rejection by remembering the following during your hunt for an agent.

1. Rejection of your work is not a rejection of you. In other words, don’t take it personally, though this may be very hard to do especially when we view our writing as an extension of ourselves.

2. Publishing is a business. Agents are only going represent work they feel they can sell. Just as publishers are only going buy work they feel will sell. Does this mean only the best books are being represented and your manuscript is crap if you can’t get an agent? No! There are a lot of talented authors who had to endure years of rejection before getting an agent.

3. Appearance does count. Anything you send to an agent should look professional and be free of mistakes. You don’t want to ruin your chances before you get a foot in the door by sending mistake filled illegible query letters. Believe me, it’s no fun sitting around wondering if things would have been different if you’d spelled the word tomorrow correctly. Yes, I’m embarrassed to say this actually happened to me.

4. Don’t get your heart set on one particular agent. You should compile a list of agents that appeal to you. That way you’ll avoid feeling like a complete failure if the one you had your heart set on passes on representing you.

5. Do your homework. Several of the rejections I received were from agents who weren’t representing my type of book, didn’t represent unpublished authors, or only acquired new clients through referrals from other clients or agents. In those instances I could have saved myself time, postage, and disappointment by paying more attention to the agency guidelines I had consulted during my search. Most listings will tell what the agent’s interests are. If they don’t represent a certain type of fiction it will say so in the listing and some listings will even tell what types of work the agent is most interested in.

6. Expect rejection, expect lots of it. If you expect to be rejected then any acceptances you get will be pleasant and unexpected surprises.

Copyright ⓒ 2001 Angela Henry

Later!

AgentFail at BookEnds LLC

Fellow writers or those of you who just want to get a good inside look at the publishing business, literary agent Jessica Faust has opened up an AgentFail thread on her blog, BookEnds. The threat is definitely worth a read.

What's AgentFail? It's a listing of the ways and means in which authors feel their agent has failed them. Examples: Requesting a full manuscript, promising to read it within a month and then sitting on it for months. Submitting the manuscript to the wrong editors at the wrong publishers and then when it's rejected (surprise), telling the author, "There's no market for this."

It's the kind of stuff that writers swap privately, but never dare say publicly -- until now. There are hundreds of posts over there, some bitter, many heartbreaking. It's the kind of airing that's good for the soul, though. Agent Caren Johnson has already written a reply. It's heartfelt and apologetic, but she dodges the main thrust of the objections, and focuses on a minor point. (In reading her post, it strikes me that she's not the kind of agent the writers are talking about. The ones they're complaining about are the kind who wouldn't respond with sympathy, empathy or at all.)

Unfortunately, most of the complaints listed are experienced by most writers who stay in the business long enough. I have to see them as part of the emotional cost of doing business.

#AgentFail, by the way, is the writers' chance to respond to #QueryFail, a day on Twitter when agents got to put out (nicely and sometimes not-so-nicely) the things that writers do to ensure being rejected when submitting a query. On her blog, agent Colleen Lindsay wrote that the intent was not to "mock or be intentionally cruel, but to educate." The fall-out, however, indicated that many writers did indeed feel that too many agents were of the former, not latter, variety.

To be fair, both sides have valid points. In other words, both sides are misbehaving. Janet Reid has a wonderful post on her blog in which she concedes that it's very easy for agents to become ... well, oversold on themselves (to use my words). However, as many of the comments on #QueryFail show, too many writers are undermining themselves by failing to follow some basic and generally applicable guidelines. They're submitting work that falls into a genre that the agent doesn't handle, typing in all caps, or bragging about how wonderful the work is and demanding that the agent drop everything, but everything that exact instant, to read it. To wit, neither side seems to understand what the other side is up against, which is why such events as QueryFail and AgentFail, no matter how painful, are a necessary evil.

There's also a new thread over at Twitter, called #AgentInspire, where writers can say good stuff about their agents. So far, there's only one Tweet.

Update!

Today, Jessica had a feel good Friday -- AgentPass and AuthorPass Day -- in which she gave kudos to writers for their professionalism and writers wrote in to share positive experiences with their agents. A good read.

Book in a Nutshell Contest

The literary agency, Knight Agency, is holding the Book in a Nutshell submissions contest. The deadline is April 20, 2009.

If you're interested in participating, submit three compelling sentences - 150 words maximum - about your completed, unpublished manuscript to submissions@knightagency.net. You must write BOOK IN A NUTSHELL in the e-mail subject line. One submission per project.

Agents will choose 20 of the best submissions and request the writers' work. The agent will then give feedback on that work. The contest may even lead to possible representation.

Remember, the deadline is April 20, 2009. Winners will be notified by May 1, 2009. For more information, go to http://tinyurl.com/cnfe9d.

Happy writing!

Patricia