A big thanks to everyone for liking, or sending kind thoughts – you know who you are!
Unfortunately the agent I mentioned yesterday has declined. It was a substantial email explaining why. I’m going to take an unprecedented step here, and let you see it for yourselves.
“Dear Arron,
I read your material over the weekend, as promised. I can see the imagination and intelligence at work here, but I can’t honestly say I loved it. After fifteen years running SFF imprints in London publishing before setting up the agency, I’m all too aware how difficult it is to get a publisher interested in a new writer, so I feel that I do have to love my clients’ work 100% – personally and professionally – to do the best possible job.”
“If I don’t feel that strongly, I’m the wrong agent. Every new author needs both an agent and an editor who do love their work. It’s hellishly difficult getting the bookselling chains to take a new novelist seriously, so that initial enthusiasm is vital. If an author’s prose doesn’t set me on fire, first and foremost, I say no, as do editors in this situation. Most UK editors see around thirty books every week and only take on one or two debut novels over an entire year.”
“The entry level for a new novelist now is ‘special’, not ‘good’. This is partially because sales and marketing directors have so much more power than they did 15 and more years ago. If they don’t believe they will be able to sell a first novel into the bookselling trade in numbers, they’ll block the editor from acquiring it in many companies. A senior editor told me a few weeks ago that even if he loved an author’s writing, he wouldn’t make an offer until the book that was submitted to him was 100% right for the market – he has just acquired an author whose previous four novels he (and everyone else in London) had turned down despite liking them a great deal. Thus, I have to believe the writers I take on and their novels are truly wonderful. I wasn’t entirely drawn in by your story and characters – I wasn’t thinking WOW, which is what I look for.”
“Another agent may well feel differently. So often, it’s about unquantifiable gut reaction to an individual author’s voice and the pricking of your thumbs rather than ‘I wanted more of THIS or less of THAT’.”
“FYI, I’ve taken on about forty writers as clients and turned down well over 10,000, so far…I know it can be as difficult to get an agent as it is to be taken on by a publisher. You just have to keep plugging away – and there are many more agents dealing with SFF and related areas than there were when I started the agency in 2004.”
“It took the best author with whom I’ve ever worked – [FAMOUS AUTHOR REDACTED] – six different novels written over more than a decade before he clinched his first publishing deal, so it can be a long road. It’s about getting that agent who chimes with your writing totally (and then finding an editor and publisher who feel the same).”
“All best wishes for the future,
[REDACTED],”
Well adventurers, this is why it’s hard, and this is what you’re up against. Let me be clear – this is a one way email. When you get something like this, you, like I, might want to respond with how much material you’ve produced, or how long you’ve been in the profession.
Don’t do that. Take it on the chin, and move on. Am I disappointed? Absolutely, but he wasn’t the first, and God willing, he won’t be the last to turn me down. The only problem is most of the other SFF agencies he mentions have already turned me down flat as well! :p
Anyway, there’s a second part to this, but that can be for tomorrow. Hope the sun is shining where you are, and have a Great Day Adventurers! 🙂
Mightier Is The Pen 