I found these the other day. They’re files filled with rejection letters. There are over 200 of them here. I threw away about this many sometime back in the 90s.
In addition, there were over 100 agents and publishers who never bothered to respond to my query.
Most of these, as you might imagine, are stamp-signed form letters, but a few of them are personal replies. Others are hand-scrawled “No”s on my original query letter. One agent just returned my query letter with a big red X on it. How ’bout that shit? Pretty professional, huh? And they wonder why everyone is running to self-publishing.
I’ve mentioned this before, and I’m going to keep on mentioning it whenever I feel like it. Over the years, I’ve asked over 100 published authors how they got their first agent. Not a single one of them said they got their first agent through a cold query. Their answers were all, to a person, a variation on luck and/or insider contacts. And yet, you ask anyone in the business how to get an agent, and they’ll all say, “Write a great query letter.” They still say that today, believe it or not.
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Well that’s encouraging, Thanks Mike.
Megan got her first agent through a cold query. Two of them offered to take DIE A LITTLE, in fact. So sometimes, luck strikes.
Patti, that is the very first example I’ve ever heard. Luck does indeed strike. But of course, DIE A LITTLE is a great novel, so I’m sure that had a lot to do with it.
Well, look at the bright side! Don’t you get to keep 100% of your profit not having an agent?
Yes I do.