Friday, October 9, 2015

Farewell to the Queried Agent

Dear Queried Agent,

I sent you my query letter months ago. I know you’re busy. You get hundreds, thousands of queries every day. I get it. I knew getting any kind of response was bucking the odds. That’s why I was grateful for the one email I did get.

In 2013, the MWC had then agent Jen Karsbaek come to the David R. Collins Writers’ Conference. I paid $25 to have her hear my pitch. It was, like, my second pitch, so it wasn’t very smooth. However, it was enough for her to request 40 pages of my manuscript. Nice.

She responded in a timely fashion and offered some pertinent advice for a rewrite. Also nice.

I followed her advice—not in timely fashion—and when it came time to resubmit the pages I discovered she was no longer an agent.

Sad, but I followed directions and sent my pages along with an explanation to the recommended agent taking over her caseload.

No response.

In the meantime, I don’t have an agent, but I have found an interested publisher.

What to do?

Be proactive.

I checked out a library copy of How To Be Your Own Literary Agent by Richard Curtis. The info was old by 12 years and counting, but at this point any info was greatly appreciated. I made myself slog through to glean whatever crumbs I could.

On a more current front, through David Brin and Google+, I got handed a nice list of websites for authors. Many of those appear to be business oriented.

I’m not down and out.

I’ve got even more reading to do.

Here are 120 great websites for authors:

No comments:

Post a Comment