Nathan Bransford - The Forums

I'm holding several queries because one of my readers convinced me to make changes within the first 10 pages.

Queries: 3
Rejection: 1
No Answer: 1
Waiting for: 1

I've posted my query letter. http://wp.me/p1BEjH-t

Genre: Upper-middle grade fantasy adventure
Total queries sent to date: 160
No response: 30
Rejections to date: 128
Form rejections: 127
Requests for pages: 7
Requests for manuscript: 3
Requests for material still outstanding: 2

You can find a Sneak Preview of my book, The Moon Coin: A Moon Realm Novel, at my Author Blog: http://wp.me/p1BEjH-2U

The first two chapters are a free download. The book launches on September 3, 2011. It'll be an epub, available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Apple's iBookstore.

You'll have to wait to see the cover and illustrations until closer to the launch date. My illustrator is Carolyn Arcabascio. There is a link for her website on my Author Blog.

Good luck in the trenches, queriers! Be valiant!

I've decided to post ALL of my stats here in the hopes of encouraging anyone who feels like the number of rejections is getting overwhelming. All I can offer as advice is to keep going, keep trying, and know that eventually the "right" thing for you will probably happen. To summarize my journey: I wrote and edited a full length novel and started my agent search last September. I met with mixed responses---but no offers. I entered contests, had my query critiqued here and by an agent as part of a webinar, tweaked the manuscript a few more times, attended a conference, did in-person pitches. In the meantime I wrote a second novel and two novellas. I started submitting my novel directly to small presses and e-publishers at the advice of a best-selling author who critiqued my first 3 chapters after I won a charity auction. I also submitted one of the novellas directly to e-publishers (the novella is romance, so this was an easy choice; the novel crosses genres between women's fiction and romance and was more difficult to place as a result). Anyway, here are my hard-earned stats. The end result being that 9 months and 27 days after I sent my first query letter I now have signed contracts with two different publishers on both my novel and my novella.

NOVEL STATS:
Queries sent to agents: 96
Partial requests: 11
Full requests: 2
Partial request that became full requests: 1
No response: 33
Personalized rejections with encouragement: 12
Personalized rejections with criticism: 1
Form rejections: 40+
Queries sent to publishers: 8
Form rejections from publishers: 4
No response from publisher: 1
Weird response indicating a Revise and Request was a possibility: 1
Offers of publication: 2
Offers accepted: 1 (yay!)

Novella Stats:
Queries sent to publishers: 6
Form rejection: 1
Offers of publication: 4
Offers to resubmit future work: 3
Offers accepted: 1 (yay!)

Incidentally, It was one of the companies that was interested in the novella, but replied after I'd accepted another offer, who asked to see my novel, and that is the publisher who is now publishing my novel. In other words, had I not written and submitted my novella to them I probably wouldn't have a contract on my novel now. Sometimes things just work out the way they were (to use the title of my novel) MEANT TO BE.

Best of luck to all who are on the submission trail. I'll update my continuing journey as I go.

Final Numbers are in:

Queries: 22
Requests for more: 8
Rejections: 9
No response: The rest

Offers of representation: 2!

Book now under contract with St. Martin's, due out in 2012.

Good luck everyone!

Woohoo, airball and cheecky! Congrats to you both!

OMG, Airball! That's freakin' awesome! I was wondering how everything panned out for you. If only you could send some of your luck my way...

oldhousejunkie wrote:OMG, Airball! That's freakin' awesome! I was wondering how everything panned out for you. If only you could send some of your luck my way...

Thanks! It was both the fastest and most excruciating month ever. Once the blog gets a bit more traction I'll write up the details, but my agent wants me to hold back until we're closer to the release date.

Saw this a few weeks ago, and thought of your book: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/02/opini ... .html?_r=1

Just sent out my first round of queries...hoping for the best...

number of queries sent: 8
personal rejections: 1
standard form rejection: 2
Partial requests: 0
Full requests: 0
Still awaiting response: 5

Luckily the two rejection notices I received weren't my "favorites" so I can only hope that they are reading my query now and are typing up their request for a full manuscript as we speak.

Genre: Young Adult Adventure
Total queries sent to date: 10
No response Rejection : 2
Rejections to date: 2
Form rejections: 1
Waiting On: 6
Requests for pages: nada
Requests for manuscript: nada

The other rejection I had was from an agent who said she wouldn't be right for the project. And I didn't see anything on query tracker that indicated it was a form rejection. So I'm glad she was honest! Also, I'm holding off on sending more queries for a little while so I can do some polishing.

Ah, I've always wanted to post here, to feel like I've accomplished something, finished something and found it good enough to submit. Although I have not yet finished my novel, I have a short story that I've submitted to magazines and such, and I just want to feel the excitement of posting in this topic...

Submissions sent: 12
Rejections: 1
Acceptances: 0
Waiting for a response: 11

But it'll be like two more months before I even hear back from anyone.

So, now that I've officially accepted an offer of representation, I feel comfortable posting my stats. The rejections stung a lot, of course, but I'm feeling pretty good about my numbers, I think.

Queries sent: 30
Rejections on queries: 10
Requests for pages (partials or fulls): 16
Rejections on pages (partials or fulls): 12
No response: 4
Offers of representation: 4
Offers accepted: 1

Total time querying: 2 months exactly

A whirlwind, for sure. I would easily recommend any of the agents I queried for YA -- they were all very kind, even if they were rejecting me.

[Post removed by poster] Good luck with your submissions and writing!

[Post removed by poster] Good luck with your submissions and writing!

This is the first time I'm able to upload my stats! Despite them being rejections, it's rather exciting.


number of queries sent: 15
personal rejections: 1
standard form rejection: 5
Partial requests: 1
Full requests: 0
Still awaiting response: 8

Yay!

CV

Might as well add to this...

I don't have an exact tally, but here's the ball-park figures for my current project:

Began submitting November 2011, one agent per week, this continued until April 2012.

Number of "no replies": lost count
Number of form rejections: ~15
Number of personal rejections: 1
Number of full manuscript requests: 1 (Paul Lucas, Jenklow Nesbit)

Sadly...the ms was rejected two months later.

Current status: back to the drawing board. Rewriting the novel, anticipating completion of a 3rd draft in the fall.

Then...round 2!