First off, many, many thanks to reader Jim Duncan for this idea. I take no credit for it. (I wish I could though.)
Here’s the deal. The commenters who participated in Agentfail expressed quite a lot of angst about agents who don’t respond to queries. Lots of people think we should respond to every single person who queries us.
So. Want to see what it’s like to manage a slush pile for a day? Think you can spot the good queries from the bad? Wondering how the view looks from our side? Think it’s easy to respond to everyone?
Here’s how this will work.
1. If you’d like to volunteer a query for Be An Agent for a Day, please e-mail your entry to querycontest@gmail.com. It can be a real query or a fake query, but if it’s a fake query, please at least make it a stab at a real query rather than a parody. When you e-mail your query to querycontest@gmail.com you consent to have it publicly posted on the blog. It’s an opportunity for some valuable query feedback. (I probably won’t be able to use every volunteer’s query, so I apologize in advance.)
2. Published (or soon to be published) authors: I need you. I would love it if you would share some of your queries for your actually published books. Please tell me who you really are when you e-mail, but change your name and the title of the book in the query.
3. On Monday the 13th I will begin posting 50 queries throughout the day. (This is a light day. I’m letting you off easy.) I’ll automate them in advance to post sporadically throughout the day, so there will be bursts of queries and then dead periods. It would probably be easiest to track the blog through Google Reader or another feed reader to simulate e-mails coming into your inbox.
4. This is where you come in. You will read and respond to as many queries as you can. You will have one week to respond to all 50 queries. You can draft your own rejection letter and manuscript request letter (personalized or non-personalized, your choice), which you will paste in the comments section of each query. You might even provide some specific feedback to try and help the author if you’re feeling extra conscientious.
5. You may request no more than five manuscripts, because hey, you’re not going to have time for your clients if you request more than five manuscripts for every 50 queries.
6. For the purposes of this contest you are looking for queries that demonstrate publishable potential, not necessarily your genres of interest.
7. Now the fun part: we’ll see how good people are at requesting the queries for books that ended up being published. I’ll post the requested/rejected stats for the actually published books on Monday the 20th, and crown the Superstar Agents who request all of the actually published books. The superstars may win a special prize (provided there are not 7,000 winners). Also, if you volunteered your query, you can track your response rate and feedback to see how your query fares.
8. If you subscribe to the blog via e-mail you will need to click through to the blog to participate. DO NOT E-MAIL ME YOUR RESPONSES. I mean it, e-mail subscribers. You must leave your responses on the actual blog. I’m afraid I’m also not able to offer tech support.
9. I thought about being extra mean and making you also do things like compare contracts and follow up on submissions, but I realize people have day jobs as well. So I decided to make it just slush.
10. Keep in mind that the quality of the queries will be far, far better on average than we agents actually receive, because anyone who volunteers their query reads agent blogs and is thus way ahead of at least 50% of the people who query me. And I realize that some of the test queries may be for books that will subsequently go on to be published books. But still: try and spot the already-published ones.
11. Please don’t give it away when you see your query or if you recognize someone else’s. Just respond with a standard rejection or request.
Also a note about this week: Tuesday and Wednesday the blog will be dark as I’m off to Oklahoma to meet the good people at the University of Tulsa. Thursday I will hopefully post This Week in Publishing, and I’m off again on Friday. I’ll start posting the contest queries next Monday.
Please let me know if you have any questions in the comments section! As always, rules and regulations subject to change without notice.
The wave of the future: crowdsourcing your workload so you can hit the beach!
Sounds very cool. Should be a great learning experience.
Nathan –
Are you taking the first 50 submitted, or are you picking and choosing out of all the ones submitted? If you’re choosing, then is it random? How will you choose 50?
Thanks,
Emina
emina-
I’m choosing somewhat randomly, but not totally randomly. My methods are secret, however.
Okay. In that case, I wish you luck in going through every query and choosing 50. I have a feeling you’ll need a coffee. 🙂
Oh – and will you notify the people whose query you chose? Or will you let them wait in suspense until Monday to find out?
No, I won’t be able to notify anyone.
If I were an agent, I’d seriously question an author’s commitment to writing if they spent their writing hours, which for most of us are very few, playing agent for a week.
Thanks, but no thanks on this contest. I’d rather use my precious “free” time writing.
au contraire, anon. I would encourage everyone who aspires to be an author to spend some time managing slush. It’s an invaluable experience.
There’s a lot more to writing than just writing.
Nathan your right. There is a lot more to writing than just writing, how I wish it wasn’t so.
Peer reviews are precious and definitely worth it.
Anon,
What an interesting take on writing! I am a writer committed to writing. I am also a teacher committed to teaching and a partner committed to my beloved.
It does not mean that all day long I have to write. Nor does it mean that from dusk to dawn I have to teach, and it does not mean that all day long I have to spend with one person (If you only knew the number of projects I have going on on a daily basis! *giggle*).
For what it’s worth, I find it to be a fun exercise directly related to my interest in writing. Since when does learning (work, life, you name it) has to be monotonous? Do we waste our time by reading as well? 😉
On a personal note, I am in a complete awe at the length an agent can go to connect with his potential clients. This is not a taken for granted!
Much thanks to you, Nathan, and the brilliant person that came up with the idea.
-Lyudmyla
As a person new to the industry, I read the Agentfail complaints with interest. It seemed that most of the writers weren’t complaining about agents who failed to respond to queries. They were complaining about agents who REQUESTED full manuscripts and didn’t respond. Or who took on the manuscript and then never did anything with it.
It sounded to me like a lot of agents have eyes bigger than their stomaches. Probably due to a lack of experience, a little fear, and maybe even a little greed.
I had an experience similar to the ones I read about. I got another agent. This one rocks. End of story.
Anon 4:28 wrote: “If I were an agent, I’d seriously question an author’s commitment to writing if they spent their writing hours… playing agent for a week.
I know for me, critiquing the queries of others like this has helped me immensely not only in writing my own query (which is a necessary part of becoming an author) but also in improving my novel writing.
OR
Don’t knock it ’till you’ve tried it.
To expand on Bryan’s sports’ analogy from the other day, imagine it like a b-ball tryout. Yeah, sure, maybe it seems more important to be scrimmaging, but when you’re running drills, you can assess how you stack up to others in specific areas… yeah, you kick ass in the layup line, but you shoot free throws like Chris Dudley (i.e., worse than Shaq)… that being said, if you’re a hands down, knock dead query writer, then perhaps there are other skills to work on (3-point shooting, currently for myself) or you could join the fray and provide magnanimous coaching.
yikes. i just sent my query earlier today and now re-reading it I’m thinking I should have sat on it for a while. I’m not happy with it but I rushed thinking I needed it to be done today. now i realize we had until Sunday??
oh well. i guess i’ll get my form reject ready…lol.
bukarella –
As a fellow teacher I must ask, hasn’t anyone told you we’re not allowed to leave the school, let alone have any sort of personal life? We’re TEACHERS, for God’s sake. It’s not as though we’re PEOPLE or anything, right?
;D
What a great opportunity to either get feedback on your own query letter, or give input to others.
I love this writerly community I have found here.
Big thanks to Jim for the idea, and Nathan for putting it in motion.
Off to polish my query letter and read up on rejection or partial request letters…
bukarella/Lyudmyla said:
On a personal note, I am in a complete awe at the length an agent can go to connect with his potential clients. This is not a taken for granted!
Much thanks to you, Nathan, and the brilliant person that came up with the idea.
I agree 100%. Thank you to Jim Duncan for coming up with the idea, and thank you so much to Nathan for devoting the time and energy to this completely awesome contest!
What a wonderful idea. I wish I could play, but not with this week’s work schedule. I’m going to enjoy watching.
If this works well, would you consider doing it again sometime in, say, July? You know you want to!
Let’s see: 50 one-page papers where all I’d have to do is say ok or no? In a week? I wouldn’t have to fix every spelling and grammar error? Wouldn’t have to explain what went wrong in every paragraph? Wouldn’t have to put a grade on it and then read it again when it came back re-done? And only 50 of them? Not 150 every week?
Easy.
Now, maybe the rest of being an agent is beyond me, but, heck, I’m an English teacher. Dealing with queries sounds pretty easy to me.
jnantz,
Don’t give me grief, I have report cards due to go out this Friday. My day is amazingly planned out to include America’s Next Top Model, 1,000 words a day towards the novel, and correcting fourth grade science tests right after I update my blog, just before I reply to comments made on my Facebook profile. I give a new meaning to multitasking (or attention deficit disorder, not sure which one fits better in my case).
If I intend to make it to school tomorrow, I better drag myself to sleep this very moment.
Night!
-Lyudmyla
Wow, this sounds like a wonderful challenge! Thank you for the opportunity Nathan. I’m ready to get a taste… Good luck to all my fellow writers!
Lots of people think we should respond to every single person who queries us.
When a person has no way to verify whether a query was received or not, other than something coming from the agent saying so, then you can imagine that people might get upset when they’re told “we won’t respond unless we’re interested.” No response could mean either in that case.
It doesn’t take that much to set up an auto-response…really.
🙂
astonwest-
Auto-responders are an option, but people are a little sanguine about how easy they are to implement without our actual clients and day to day operations being affected. As Ginger Clark said in an interview, we don’t want our clients to get our auto-replies when they send a subject line that says “quick query for you.”
Nathan, though I’m not too big into auto-responses (and hate read receipts), isn’t it possible to implement filters that distinguish emailers (e.g., no query type auto-response receipts to clients)?
bofa-
You’d have to add a whooole lot of people to a list in order to avoid snaring clients and editors. I e-mail a lot of people in a day. And it’s always changing.
I think it’s do-able, but I don’t think people should underestimate what a pain it would be to manage.
It should be up to the agent. And let’s be honest, the number of e-mails that don’t reach an agent due to technical snafus is positively miniscule.
People really seem to love autoresponders at the moment!
They’re definitely not as cut and dry as people seem to think. Having to set up rules and functions and keep these updated would be quite tricky. The best way to have them work seamlessly would be to have a separate email address, and a blanket auto-response for it.
However, more than one email address becomes cumbersome and confusing. Take it from someone who has 5! I think agents should just do what works for them.
Dynamite idea!
What an idea!
As someone who has a waist-high stack of rejected job applications in her office, I think I’ve got an idea of what it would take for an agent to respond to every query. I have no problem whatsoever with agents only responding to queries that generate interest.
Neat idea. I cross posted to my blog. I don’t have time, or a deskjob or I’d participate. I’m also not bashing agents either ^^ we all have hard jobs and no one can know what another’s job is like until they give it a try themselves.
This is a great start, but I think there’s more we can do to make the Agent for a Day contest more realistic.
1. I’ll volunteer to stop by unannounced at a few lucky participants’ homes, clutching a 500 page single-spaced manuscript in 8 pt. font that I’ll insist is the next Harry Potter. When participants’ slam the door in my face, I’ll sneak around to their window and bounce up and down to get their attention.
2. While participants are out eating lunch with their families, I will spring out from behind a potted plant and ask them if they’d like to represent my 500 page masterpiece (the next Harry Potter!).
3. Each participant should be given a cardboard box of ramen and several cans of tuna fish to get a feel for what it’s like to be a new agent working on commission. Points will be awarded for creative use of the cardboard box as either shelter or as a source of nourishment.
Can we redact names from our letter, or should we just send as is and trust that you’ll redact what should be? I know you said you’d redact our names, but I’m also wondering about things like the names of schools we teach at, the names of magazines or newspapers we work for, etc. Situations where one’s employer may not want to pop up on a Google alert.
Perhaps I’m just being paranoid, but this is why I’ve never submitted a query for a public appearance.
That, and the query I’m thinking of sending is an old one, so I’m actually not working anymore at the places I say I am. I wouldn’t want my previous employer to see it and think I was misrepresenting myself.
What a great idea! I’m in!
Totally brilliant!
I am in! Not sure if I’ll actually submit a query, but I am SO all over that slush pile. After years of people telling me I “ought to be an agent,” I’ll finally get to prove them wrong. 🙂
What fun this will be…tuna fish, ramen, cardboard boxes and all.
Janny
Fabulous idea – I can’t wait! Good job there is a limit to MS requests, because going by my reaction to QueryShark etc I’d end up requesting about 40 otherwise.
Bet I’ll pick all the ‘dogs’.
Nathan,
Do you think that latecoming participants will be influenced by existing comments on queries? For example, if ten people have already commented on a query and six of them requested partials, I might be influenced by them?
I don’t know if there is a solution to this but it could be an interesting phenomenon.
Looking forward to the competition!
Ego
Ego-
That’s an interesting question, and I think it will actually make it realistic. We face bandwagon pressure too, whether that’s a trend or existing offers of representation and we have to make our own decisions without being led astray.
Ego-
That’s an interesting question, and I think it will actually make it realistic. We face bandwagon pressure too, whether that’s a trend or existing offers of representation and we have to make our own decisions without being led astray.
Awesome idea for a contest! I’ll be slogging through the slush with the rest of you.
I thought about sending a query, but since it’s been on Evil Editor’s site and it’s rather distinctive, anyone who reads both sites would recognize it.
You have the funnest site, Nathan!
They don’t make enough aspirin in all the world to handle that task. 😉
I submitted my query and I’m expecting Nathan is going to get inundated with queries. I don’t know how he’s going to choose just 50 of them.
I decided not to include the first pages of the book, because I though each post would just get way too long if everyone did that. I can’t imagine 50 posts, each of them having part of the first chapter. Not every agent requests that as part of the query, so I left mine off.
Something did occur to me, though. If my query becomes one of the fifty, I should’t participate in responding to queries. You think I’m nuts and am not going to recommend a partial for my own submission? If I’m going to play agent with my own submission, I’m going to request a full manuscript, already have an editor and publisher in mind, and have decided I’m not settling for anything other than a huge advance. 🙂
Hope you enjoy your visit to the University of Tulsa, Nathan. Both my daughter and son-in-law graduated from there — it’s a great university. Enjoy!
50 queries all week? That is light . . . you should post 50 queries a day for five days . . . more in tune to what you probably receive, right? 🙂
Let me get this straight: I pretend to do your job and the trick is to pick the queries that were from published works? The problem is that assumes that the works in question should have been published over the ones that weren’t. Sorry, rigged game.
anon-
Your comment cracked me up.
Just in case it wasn’t clear: this IS a game. So yes, it is rigged (by me). If you want to experience the iron clad reality of being an agent you’ll have to become one.
(which you’re welcome to do, by the way.)
Ego said…
Nathan,
Do you think that latecoming participants will be influenced by existing comments on queries? For example, if ten people have already commented on a query and six of them requested partials, I might be influenced by them?
I don’t know if there is a solution to this but it could be an interesting phenomenon.
I had this thought too. I don’t know about everyone else, but I resolved not to read anyone else’s comments before I have made my decision and posted my request/rejection.
Nathan:
You said we should come up with a form rejection letter, but I’m wondering if a response that said something like this would work as well:
This would get a form rejection because 1, 2, 3…
Or
I would request to see more because A, B, C…
I ask because I think I’d feel a bit of a jackass doing the actual roleplaying. Or is that the point? We’re getting judged on WHAT we pick and not on HOW we word our replies. Or is being diplomatic and/or responsive part of the game?
I’m not certain if I’m going to play or not. Although it sounds educational, on the other hand I’m really burned out on the whole #fail experience.
Nathan, do we pretend like we’re addressing the queries to you? I’m wondering because if we’re adding a personal touch or connection, should we make it specific to you or just make something up?