Query Update The Beast of Rose Valley

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, because I’ve been hard at work on The Great Republic. I think it’s going pretty well, and I already like this novel better than my last. Then again, I expect that I will always think that of the book I’m actively working on.

For those curious, I thought I’d drop some statistics on where I am with The Beast of Rose Valley.

If you don’t know how this works, basically I send a letter to literary agents, attempting to convince them that my novel is worth publishing. If I can get one of them to agree, then we work together to polish it up and sell it. They get a cut for doing all of the schmoozing, and I get published.

If they like my query letter, then they request more — either a partial (which is some number of pagers) or a full (which is the entire novel). Finding an agent to take you on is very hard, but a good indicator that I’m headed in the right direction is whether I’m getting requests for more.

So I’m still on the first step — finding an agent. I’ve sent out 24 query letters to 23 agents and 1 publisher (sometimes you can skip the agent if the press is small). It’s been almost 3 weeks since my first query letter, and they’ve gone out sporadically over that time, so not all 24 of them were sent 3 weeks ago.

Most agencies take anywhere from two to eight weeks to respond, and some don’t respond at all if they aren’t interested (which is super annoying as the one sending the query).

Thus far, I’ve gotten zero requests for more, 5 rejections, and I have 19 still outstanding. So what does all that mean?

A whole lot of nothing, unfortunately. My rejections were mostly form letters, which don’t give me a lot to go on. I could have queried the wrong agents, or the agent could be too busy, or the agent may just hate Texas. Who knows.

Working on the next book has definitely been the best salve for dealing with the worry of what will become of all of this, but there’s no reason to panic yet. Some books query 100s of agents before finding the one that bites, and I intentionally held back on some of the agents that I thought might be the best fit because I wanted to see if I could get any useful feedback first.

So, keep your fingers crossed and your eyes on the blog for further updates. Something is sure to happen eventually!

 

3 Comments

  1. Jorel

    They definitely should explain themselves when they reject a book. I’m excited for the great republic, but it’ll be nice to hear back from the other agents.

    Reply
  2. Hollyann Wood

    Hey Josh, please try Authors.me. I worked with the founding team and they’re amazing at getting people published. 🙂

    Reply
  3. Michele Toman

    It has to be tough to get all the rejections and not be demotivated. I bet you have to work hard to keep things in perspective. Of course, I think you are a great writer (no bias here), so I am confident someone will bite!

    Reply

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