Agents and Statistics

At an agent talk before Christmas, the agent casually announced some statistics. He received 5,000 submissions a year. Of these 4,800 weren't what he wanted (he was actually more blunt than this). Of the remaining 200, he asked to see a full manuscript once a month. He took on half of these.

This could sound very depressing, and the person who actually attended the talk had thought they were damning statistics. However, I thought they were actually rather cheering because the implication is that he's very good at weeding out the manuscripts that he knows he's not interested in for whatever reason - subject matter, genre, writing style, author approach. For him to take on half - half! - means that he's good at spotting 'his' thing.

And that's what you want, an agent who thinks you're 'their' thing. You don't want to work with someone who doesn't believe in you. You don't want to work with someone who has to have their arm twisted in order for them to take you on. You want the agent who thinks your book is fab, the one who is bursting with enthusiasm to sell it, the one who utterly believes in your work.

And it's also encouraging for anyone who has received anything other than a standard rejection. Yes, you're one of the rejected, but the final 200 out of 4,800 doesn't sound so bad. You're in the top 2%! You've been picked out as worth of special merit, but this time - and with this agent - you're not moving on to the next level. However depressing, it's also a strong sign you're on the right lines.

Rejection is tough. Of course it is. But we all go through it. The writer who has never been rejected on the road to publication is a rare beast. I possess a letter from one agent who told me not to bother with writing as I was wasting my time. (I had a good publishing deal with a Big 6 publisher a few months later, so not entirely wasting my time...)

Take heart! Push on through the rejection, and try again. Try better.

Why do novels get rejected?

I read a really interesting post this morning by Janet Reid. She's an agent and in the post breaks down why she rejected/accepted the 124 novels she asked to read in full over last six months or so. A lot of the reasons were solvable - slow pace for example, or structural issues. A few needed more editorial work that she had time to give. Others were good novels, but not right for her - these she referred to other agents. In the end she made two offers out of the 124.

It's such a lottery. What Janet Reid may see as being slow, another agent may see as being gentle or subtle. I didn't find The Da Vinci Code to be a page-turner, but I accept that I am a rare exception and not the rule.

If the odds are 124:2 (and that's for novels she asked to see on the basis of a few chapters), then we have to accept that individual taste is going to play a bigger part than we'd like. Not everybody likes everything, in just the same way that I don't like red wine or mushrooms, but love licorice and aniseed. We can't do anything about that. What we can do is make sure that the sortable stuff - pacing, structure, editing etc - is as good as we can make it before we send out. It is a lottery, but we can, with work, swing the odds in our favour.