Submission Stats

I keep a careful list of my queries and manuscript submissions. As of this moment, I've sent out 62 queries for my novel. Nine of those resulted in requests for the manuscript, either in whole (7) or part (2). I've had 18 rejections; that number includes one of the full manuscript reads. Eight agents I'm counting as non-responders, meaning I queried them a long time ago and never heard anything, possibly even after sending follow-up queries. (Note that some agencies have the policy that, if you never hear back, it's an assumed "no." I think this is a cowardly policy, but there you have it.) That leaves 28 agents I've yet to hear from (and that number does not include those I'm waiting to hear back from after having received requests for the manuscript).

In percentages it looks like this:

29% of responses have been rejections
13% are "assumed" rejections because I never received any response
13% of responses were requests to read the manuscript (meaning I'm now waiting to hear back)
45% are outstanding (waiting for an initial response)

I have no idea what is average, but I'm satisfied with these numbers. And it's all a matter of numbers. The more people who read the manuscript, the more chances there will be one who likes it well enough to take it on.

Even the rejections have been encouraging, though. I've had more than one agent tell me this novel isn't doing it for them, but that they like my writing style and would like to see future manuscripts. That's something, right?

Which means I really should get to work on that next book. (Well, I am working on it. Have about 11k words written. Completely different genre, though: YA fantasy.) It's sometimes difficult to focus when there's so much happening, but I have to try.