Comments on: Slush Week: The recap

By: Moses

Moses — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:03:31 +0000

Thanks very much for all of your posts and comments on Slush Week. It's been incredibly helpful.

I just posted the following Tweet, and I'd be so thankful to hear how the agents here would answer the question:

#askagent A new author with a successful novel in the Kindle store: Would this make you more or less likely to want to represent that title?

By: DGLM

DGLM — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:45:44 +0000

Woah, slow down, anonymous. There are definitely times we pass on things because we have something too similar on our lists, and just because that's the case doesn't mean we're going to explain the reasoning to someone who queried.

"It wasn't what we were looking for" CAN mean it wasn't good. It also CAN mean that it's too competitive with something we already handle.

Yes, most of the time we pass on things because they don't stand out to us as especially wonderful, but there are countless other reasons that some material might not get requested.

So Christine, yes, you do want to find people who do books similar to the one you've written. That might mean you hit one or two people who have something TOO close, but it's still the best option out there. Good luck!

--Jim

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:28:54 +0000

Christine,

If that's the case, an agent will tell you, in very clear terms, that's what they're doing. If an agent doesn't tell you that, it wasn't the reason you got rejected.

An agent's individual taste is a factor. But you can see from last week that it wasn't anything like the main issue. When an agent says 'it wasn't what we were looking for', they don't mean 'it failed my personal, secret agenda, something you, a mere outsider, are not privy to', they mean 'we were looking for something good'.

Do your research, submit to agents who say they're looking for a book like yours, but don't waste too much time and energy second-guessing them, spend it on the prose and expressing your ideas.

By: christine

christine — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 01:09:49 +0000

Love, love, loved it, and am very grateful. One hopes that your efforts in author education will pay off in shorter slush piles.

A question remains:
We are told to do our homework and seek out agents who rep similar titles/authors to our own work. The goal is to find an agent who "gets" what we do. I'm wondering if that approach could rule out a potential match, being too similar to a project/author you already rep?

Thanks again!

By: Donna Gambale

Donna Gambale — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:05:18 +0000

I've read every piece of query advice I could find, but I've learned the most from actual queries (successful or not) — and even more from those with agent comments. Thanks for Slush Week, and here's hoping for another!

By: DGLM

DGLM — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:15:14 +0000

Interesting question: "would any of you come to a different decision than your colleagues did?"

As for me, yes. I would have turned down Rachel's and very likely Lauren's. I think both of their critiques were spot on, though I might have been less forgiving.

The only one I would have requested was Jessica's.

-Jim

By: Wendy

Wendy — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:49:19 +0000

Thank you for Slush Week. I especially enjoyed seeing where the agents differed in expectations. To me, that was the best – what each individual prefers so I can better personalize my query. Except, I can't because I submitted to DGLM a couple weeks before these postings. I was thrilled to see a couple things I did "right" and can see others that still need improvement. Yes, I hope DGLM does this again.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:20:04 +0000

'it was a bit reassuring to see that even from agent to agent the ideas of what does and doesn't work vary greatly.'

I didn't take away that message at all. Yes, agents have different taste, but the problems were more fundamental than that.

I think it's really unhelpful for prospective authors to think it's the *agent's* fault their stuff gets rejected, that it's some whim or you failed to crack their secret code, or if you'd got Jim not Jessica on Tuesday not Thursday then you'd have made your fortune.

DGLM makes you submit to a particular agent, listing what they're looking for and what they're not looking for. You submitted to that individual agent, sent them something you thought they'd like. If they didn't, it's not *their* fault (or their lesson to be learned, for that matter).

I guess that's another question for the agents, then: looking at all nine queries, would any of you come to a different decision than your colleagues did?

By: Tricia

Tricia — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:37:51 +0000

Thanks a lot. I learned so much and am reworking my query. Thanks for all the time you all put into this.

By: Lynn

Lynn — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:29:43 +0000

I'll add my thank you for doing SW and I'm hoping that you'll do it again! Next time (yes, I know it's called Slush Week) but I would love to see more diversity. If you could give us some examples of good queries vs bad ones and those in between, I think it could be very helpful. Some may say that it would be a waste of time because it would be too obvious, but I'm not so sure. What one agent may think is good, another agent might think it's just okay, etc.

Just a thought, and thanks again!