Why You are Getting Rejected by Agents
When you’re querying agents, it can be easy to grow disheartened when rejection after rejection rolls in.
Especially because agents rarely ever give personal feedback. The dreaded form rejection is well known to anyone has dipped a toe in the querying trenches and leaves many writers at a loss as to why they were rejected.
Below, I’ve compiled some of the most common reasons an agent may reject your pitch or query letter.
This isn’t a comprehensive list and I don’t speak for any specific agent. These observations are from what I’ve gathered from agent interviews, conferences, authors who have queried and querying myself.
The Basics
Not Following Guidelines
The most basic reason for a rejection is not following guidelines. Each agency website has a page for submission guidelines. This includes the format (a Word doc or PDF, email for form), font, font size and more.
If you fail to follow these guidelines, you’re most likely to get automatically rejected.
It’s important to read submission rules carefully. Many agents use Query Manager forms, but others use email to accept queries.
When sending an email, most agencies don’t allow attachments for initial queries due to potential spam or viruses. Be sure to read submission guidelines carefully and, most importantly, follow them!
What Agents Represent
Finding out what genres an agent represents is as easy as finding their social media or going to their agency website.
Agents make it very easy to find out what they’re looking for. This is where doing your homework is important.
Say you’re querying a Young Adult fantasy book with elves and dragons. You find an agent whose wish list desires elves and dragons. But there’s a catch: they only represent Adult. Despite the fact that you both like elves and dragons, sending them a book in an age group they don’t represent will likely result in an automatic rejection.
Sending Too Many Queries
Different agencies have different rules about how many times you can query. Some agencies are a “one query is a query to all.” In other words, your single query applies to the entire agency. This means that when your book is rejected, you can’t send another for the same book.
Writers are also discouraged from sending the same agent the same manuscript twice without significant revision.
The Specifics
Your Query
Let’s say that you’ve followed all of the guidelines. You know the method, you have the format memorized, and you have the perfect agent in mind to query who represents your genre and age group.
But then you get rejected, anyway.
Unfortunately, the basics explained above are only the bare minimum. If you meet the bare minimum criteria, you still have other hurdles to go over.
Your query letter is the first of those hurdles. A query letter is often the first impression on an agent that you have, which is why it’s so important for your query letter to be as strong as possible.
I have a free resource on my site on how to write a query letter, so I won’t go too in-depth here about the details, but a query letter should at least have a pitch that includes stakes and character motivation, a biography, and details of the book such as word count.
Your Premise
The main sales pitch you have to work with in your query is your premise. You might be saying, “duh, Madelyn. Obviously.”
But hear me out! Not only does your premise have to be unique enough to catch attention but it should be marketable and align with premises the agent likes. It helps to look at who agents represent and what kind of books they like.
If you are unsure of your premise, you can chat through it with me during a free consultation or check out books such as Save the Cat for information and inspiration.
Trends in Publishing
Trends come and go in cycles. We all saw the vampire boom that occurred after Twilight and the dystopian trend that brought about The Hunger Games.
These trends come and go, so if you have a book that’s already on-trend, great! If you don’t, though, or if you’re pitching a book to an already-saturated market (such as you’re querying a witch book at the tale end of the trend when all agents and publishers are sick of witches), you might have a harder time.
However, the solution isn’t to simply write to trends. By the time you see a trend hit the market, it’s likely already on its way out in the backend of publishing. So the best course of action is to write what you want and hope you manage to catch a trend.
Outside Factors
Many writers stress over their first pages and query letter over and over for weeks or months. While it’s important to reevaluate when you’re not getting the responses you want, it’s important to acknowledge the outside factors that you unfortunately have no control over.
Some of these factors may be:
· The agent’s current workload
· Time of year
· Difficulties in the agency/within publishing
· The agent’s editor contacts
· The agent’s mood
Sometimes, it’s all about timing and finding the right agent at the right time. There is a lot of luck involved!
Dissecting Form Rejections
No matter whether you query for a week or ten years, you’re going to receive at least one form rejection. These are rejection emails (or form emails through QueryManager) are generic and not personalized. Most of the time, these rejection letters are form because agents simply don’t have the time to give personalized feedback to every single person who queries them. Many receive several queries a day!
A lot of writers try to read into their form rejections, but I typically advise against it. You can run yourself into circles trying to dissect a form rejection that simply means “no” in a polite way.
The only time you should be concerned is when you receive a large number of form rejections and few to no requests. If you receive personalized rejections, this can be a good sign! It means something about your submission was interesting enough for the agent to take time out of their day to provide individual feedback.