15 months and 195 queries later, I finally received an offer of representation yesterday from Sam Stoloff of the Frances Goldin Literary Agency in New York. Among the agency’s clients are Barbara Kingsolver and Dorothy Allison. I’m delighted, of course, since just a few weeks ago I was planning to begin work on a new young adult novel after recognizing that nearly all of my query options for Julia Milan had been played out. Sam was responsive from the beginning and his agency is very well respected. This is a huge relief for me. Back in December I had an agent request changes to the ending of the novel, but never heard from that agent again, even after a follow-up email two months after submitting my revisions. That was disheartening. At any rate, I'm excited about revising the manuscript and look forward to sending the manuscript out to editors.
Here are my query numbers. I sent out 195 queries total. 30 are still out. I received 9 full manuscript requests and 15 partial requests for a positive response rate of 13%. Agents who were interested in my manuscript tended to respond quickly, whereas those who took their time either eventually said no thanks or simply never responded. 89 agents sent rejection letters and 52 agents never responded to my query. I e-mailed 165 queries, snail mailed 24 queries, and used 6 online forms from agency websites. What a crazy, maddening step in the writing process. I'm so glad it's over.
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