Rejection Letter #2 for ‘Thirty Seconds Before Midnight’
Friday, 29 January 2010
Interestingly, today after having posted yesterday about the status of my queries I have received a rejection back from one of the agencies and not the one that had sent back their postcard acknowledging receipt! So there is a third option other than had not opened package or lost in post and that is, received package but not put postcard in post.
This rejection letter reads:
“Thank you for your submission. We read it with interest but we did not feel that it was suitable for our list.
Unfortunately, due to the high volume of submissions we receive and the relatively small size of our office staff, we are unable to give individual consultation on manuscripts.
We wish you every success in finding an agent and a publisher for your work, and we thank you for thinking of <US>”
Onwards!
No. 1 — January 29th, 2010 at 18:33
Reading between the lines – does this say they haven’t read the manuscript, just flipped through a few pages?
Do literary agents earn their keep?
No. 2 — February 1st, 2010 at 16:56
TBH I’m not sure whether it’s worth ‘reading between the lines’ – I suspect that way lies insanity. There was a brilliant satirical blog post I read a while back along these lines – I will try to dig it out.
The film I’ve just reviewed – The Agent – does a very good line in analysing the work that agents do and don’t do for writers. Ultimately they are networked negotiators and given that technology has made it so much easier for aspiring writers to produce and reproduce manuscripts some kind of gate-keeping is essential for the publishers.
I’m trying to set a screening of The Agent up at the New Park Cinema – probably sometime late May. I’ll let you know when I have the dates confirmed!