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Going, going, gone
Feb. 14th, 2013 06:58 pmOne rejection letter so far for Skywatch! Whoo!
I actually have it out at eight agents right now, because I ran across an agent who got me really excited, so when I sent out my query to bring it back up to seven queries out, I sent another. Because why not! But I do intend to generally keep it to seven queries out at a time, give or take those who have a no-response-means-no policy (but I will wait till their reply-by date).
I've also been doing research for agents for The Novel. I found a lot more potential Skywatch agents that way, but fewer for The Novel. Steampunk and middle grade are in right now. YA is not less in, but when agents say they want "YA fantasy" I have learned that they mostly mean urban fantasy. And the sheer number of agents who straight-up don't want high fantasy or anything with unicorns, even if they take basically all other spec-fic, is higher than I thought (though if they don't take unicorns, they also tend not to take vampires, werewolves, angels or dystopias, either). I get it, being a person who generally doesn't enjoy high fantasy or unicorns, but it's discouraging when I have a book that plays with those things (or at least, talks back to the stereotypical presentation thereof) and I'm barred from submitting.
Strictly speaking, I could submit anyway, but that's on every agent's pet peeves list I've ever seen--submissions that don't pay attention to the guidelines and agent preferences! So, I will likely have a smaller pool for The Novel, especially since I can't re-submit to agents I submitted to before, unless their guidelines specifically state that resubmissions with significant revision are allowed (which is generally a no-no).
So, yeah. More research to do, but I'm feeling pretty okay.
I actually have it out at eight agents right now, because I ran across an agent who got me really excited, so when I sent out my query to bring it back up to seven queries out, I sent another. Because why not! But I do intend to generally keep it to seven queries out at a time, give or take those who have a no-response-means-no policy (but I will wait till their reply-by date).
I've also been doing research for agents for The Novel. I found a lot more potential Skywatch agents that way, but fewer for The Novel. Steampunk and middle grade are in right now. YA is not less in, but when agents say they want "YA fantasy" I have learned that they mostly mean urban fantasy. And the sheer number of agents who straight-up don't want high fantasy or anything with unicorns, even if they take basically all other spec-fic, is higher than I thought (though if they don't take unicorns, they also tend not to take vampires, werewolves, angels or dystopias, either). I get it, being a person who generally doesn't enjoy high fantasy or unicorns, but it's discouraging when I have a book that plays with those things (or at least, talks back to the stereotypical presentation thereof) and I'm barred from submitting.
Strictly speaking, I could submit anyway, but that's on every agent's pet peeves list I've ever seen--submissions that don't pay attention to the guidelines and agent preferences! So, I will likely have a smaller pool for The Novel, especially since I can't re-submit to agents I submitted to before, unless their guidelines specifically state that resubmissions with significant revision are allowed (which is generally a no-no).
So, yeah. More research to do, but I'm feeling pretty okay.