Nathan Bransford - The Forums

Conference season is in full-swing, so my inbox has been pretty quiet lately! This means something, right? Forgive me, I am ignorant. Yep, it means something! There have been a lot of writing conferences lately, and agents usually end up requesting a lot of material from live pitches. Between that ...

Give in to the insanity, airball! There's no stopping it now!

Here are my slightly-updated stats. Conference season is in full-swing, so my inbox has been pretty quiet lately!

Queries sent: 17
Rejections: 4
No response means no: 2
Partials: 3
Fulls: 2
Still waiting on: 6

Wow, Don, that's amazing! Congratulations!

I've just started querying MS #2. Here are my stats so far:

Queries sent: 11
Rejections: 2
Partial requests: 2
Full requests: 1
Still waiting on: 6

Super-excited!

Oh wow. It's starting! I have actual stats for Manuscript #2!

Genre: YA Fantasy/Horror
Queries sent: 0
Contests entered: 1
Partial requests: 1

Freaking. Out.

I'm of two minds on it. On one hand, the story must have made an impact on the agent if they took the time to call, so I think it's a very nice gesture. But on the other, it's so rare that most people would immediately assume that they were calling with good news. That's the part that makes me wince...

I really admire your resilience! That split-second transition from excited and hopeful to crushed must have stung. Every time I hear about an agent who calls people to reject them, it boggles my mind.

You know what's awesome? Starting over. Everything's so shiny and new again!

Queries sent: 0
Number of dream agents at the top of the list: 16
Trunked manuscripts: 2
Excitement: Rising!
Chapters left to write: 8
Querypalooza 2.0: Impending

All right, back to work with me.

Yeesh, got a rather harsh rejection on a partial first thing this morning. Every agent I've dealt with so far has been extremely polite (and sometimes very complimentary!) but this one was very brusque and blunt.

Oh well - onward and upward.

Thanks, otherside89girl - I shouldn't be so defeatist. I still have a partial, a full, and a bunch of queries out - something might go right next time around!

Rejections on a full AND a partial today. And the full rejection was form.

I'm starting to think that this book just isn't going to happen.

Hi Nathan! I'm back with more.

I was wondering - when it comes to submissions, does a 'maybe' ever turn into a 'yes' for you, or do you always know immediately whether you want to represent it or not?

There have been a ton of conferences recently, and agent responses tend to slow down in general this time of year: the queries build up while the agent is at the conference, for one, and they have the material they requested from pitch sessions to read through as well. I'm sure you'll get some respo...

Sent a new round of queries last week. On one hand, I got quite a few rejections yesterday... but then I also got a full request this morning, so I think I'll live! New stats: Queries sent: 53 Still waiting on: 12 Rejections: 36 - Personalized: 3 Partial requests: 2 Straight-to-Full requests: 3 (1 R...

Has anyone received any critiques not pertaining to prose or characterization? Haha, I don't think any of the critiques I've gotten have been about prose or characterization! I've gotten reasons for rejection like "all the elements didn't come together in the manuscript for me" or "I...

Ink, the "per Agent's guidelines" made me think that the first ten pages were part of the submission guidelines, but if not, I stand corrected. It's a good sign regardless!

But no matter what, definitely always double-check the submission guidelines.