It’s the Hope that Kills You
By JL Copeland
It’s the hope that kills you. So for this post, only one track seemed appropriate:
From reading these posts, you may have picked up that I’m a bit of a dreamer.
But as that annoying old song goes: You’ve got to have a dream; if you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?
And last week, I thought it just might have.
A month or two ago, I told you that before self-publishing my debut novel, Nicksgate, I was first going to roll the dice and query agents and see what happened.
For the uninitiated, if you want to be (traditionally) published, you first have to convince an agent to represent you; they then try to sell your book to a publisher.
How rare is it to get a literary agent?
Getting an agent is hard, like 5000-to-1 hard, as I detailed in this blog post. They get A LOT of submissions (approx 10,000 a year).
Who is the best literary agent for new authors?
To find the best agent for Nicksgate, my writer and book coach friend, Karmen Spiljak, recommended I sign up for Query Tracker and Publisher’s Marketplace, where you can view agents’ profiles and the recent deals they’ve made on behalf of their clients. They’re even ranked according to success.
This is important, as Karmen told me:
‘No agent is better than a bad agent.’
I didn’t want some chancer who was going to hang on to my book for two years and do diddly squat with it (I’ve got me for that).
So, I first selected the top 15 agents in the horror genre that were currently accepting submissions and mailed them my query letter. Go big or go home.
The standard pattern: if they like your query, they ask for the first three chapters of the novel and sometimes a synopsis. If they like those, they then ask for the full manuscript.
Again, the numbers are not encouraging. When I scrolled through various agents’ profiles, the best odds I could find of one of them requesting a full manuscript were 103-1.
Check out this guy’s stats on Query Tracker:
Yep, he’s received 514 queries and made one (ONE!) partial request (the first few chapters). I would not be sending my query to him.
How many literary agent rejections are normal?
30-100+ rejections? Completely normal. Some traditionally published authors rack up over 100 before they land representation.
What author was rejected 23 times?
That would be Frank Herbert and Dune. But 23 is nothing; I’d guess most bestsellers by debut authors rack up that amount before an agent takes them on.
The consensus appears to be as follows:
15-30 queries/rejections: You’re dipping your toes. If the water’s cold (i.e. no requests for opening chapters/synopsis etc.), you need to change your query letter.
30-80: You’ve let go of the pier and are struggling to swim. Most authors who are published will be tossed the rubber ring from an interested agent around this point.
80-100+ : You’re drowning. The agents (or possibly the market) are watching you sink with an apologetic, ‘it’s not you, it’s me.’
My target was to mail 50 queries. If no one wanted to play with me by that point, I would take my ball and go home (to self-publish).
So, to reiterate, the standard advice is that based on the responses you get, you need to make adjustments to your submission package.
E.g. if no one is responding to your query letter, you need to change the query letter. If agents are requesting your early chapters and then rejecting it, you need to change the opening of your novel.
Sod that.
Nicksgate is done. No way am I spending another year tinkering with it; I want to write a new story. It’s not perfect, but what novel is?
And as to the query letter, I would rather drown myself in a vat of cat vomit than spend any more time on that thing.
What is a good example of a query letter?
You can find examples all over the internet. There are some decent ones (that led to requests from agents) here.
Here’s my actual letter, no bullshit this time:
A ghost, an abandoned mine, a secret society, and the school bully she still hates are bad enough. Discovering she’s the prophesied hero expected to stop hell spilling into the Lake District is just taking the piss.
Dear Agent,
I am seeking representation for my debut supernatural horror novel, NICKSGATE, complete at 90,000 words. It will appeal to readers who enjoy the dark humour of The September House along with the beleaguered outsider perspective of Mary: An Awakening of Terror and Bat Eater.
Thirty-six-year-old Nicola Postlethwaite is Nicksgate’s resident outsider. Trapped in a dead-end job in the Lake District and caring for her withdrawn mother, she’s long accepted that nobody expects much from her and her prospects are about as buoyant as a bag of hammers.
Then the ghost of her dead uncle appears.
Determined to make the apparition disappear, Nicola follows its clues to a secret society hidden within the village. They believe she is destined to stop an ancient evil. Nicola is fairly sure they’ve mistaken real life for a fantasy novel.
Unfortunately, the village lunatics might be onto something. Ghosts reveal disturbing secrets about the fate of her father; a stone circle almost kills her; and a relentless heatwave grips the valley. Nicola starts to suspect the impossible may be real after all.
Because for the first time in her life, Nicola feels wanted. A budding romance with Soo-jin offers escape, while the cult offers something she’s never had before: a place to belong.
But when she learns a group of thrill-seeking YouTubers are searching for the long-lost mine that swallowed her father—and the gate to Hell rumoured to lie within it—Nicola becomes convinced they’re about to unleash a catastrophe the cult has spent centuries guarding against.
To stop them—and save both the village and her future with Soo-jin—she’ll have to descend into the darkness she’s feared since childhood.
Originally from the Lake District, UK, I have spent the last seventeen years teaching in South Korea; always an outsider, looking in. I write stories (horror, dystopia, humour) for people who are unsure where they fit in this strange world. I have published these along with my blog at JLCopeland.com and have a fast-growing newsletter.
Thank you for your time and attention.
Sincerely,
JL Copeland
What do you think? Your cup of tea? Or the most god-awful pulpy trash you’ve ever laid eyes upon? Yeah, maybe.
Now we come to the dream part.
I’m a dreamer, but I’m not delusional. I assumed every single one of those fifteen agents would reject my query, and most not even bother to reply.
I expected at best I might get a couple of polite refusals; if I was lucky, a couple of lines of feedback, or even the holy grail of ‘this isn’t for me but send me your next book.’
But again, you can’t win the lottery if you don’t buy yadayadayada.
I received auto-replies from most of the agents, telling me it would take up to a month for them to deign to read my email.
So, I was surprised when three hours after I’d sent the first five queries, I got a reply.
From a senior literary agent.
At a major literary agency in New York.
Requesting the full manuscript.
I’d never had a moment like this in my life. I’ve always been a straight-C student; if I could describe myself in a word, it would be ‘disappointing.’
I was certainly not one of those precocious types I hear writers on podcasts describe themselves as:
“I started writing my first stories when I was seven; by the time I was nine, I knew I wanted to grow up to be an author.”
When I was seven, I was burning Lego figures with a magnifying glass. By the time I was nine, I still wanted to grow up to be He-Man.
Here’s me at 13 years old, and the closest I ever got to living the high life:
That’s why I decided to first shoot for traditional publishing, even though my head tells me not to waste my time and go down the self-publishing route. I crave that validation.
I know, I know.
And so.
For the next few days, it felt like my life was on hold.
Hope, meet suffering.
I kept telling myself the likelihood was that she would reject it.
But I’d passed the 103 (or 514)-to-one bit.
I’d leapfrogged the ‘send me the first few chapters’ bit.
If she’d responded so soon, she must have really liked the pitch, right? Right?
At one point, I even allowed myself to fantasize about visiting their offices in New York and looking out over Manhattan. I’ve never been to New York.
It was like when England reached the semi-final of the World Cup. You KNEW it was likely that they’d screw it up, but they were close; there was a chance.
PLEASE.
After three days, I just wanted to know either way; I couldn’t stand the tension anymore.
Alas. At the end of the week, she put me out of my misery with a two-line message rejecting Nicksgate, damning me with faint praise.
I was okay.
I was grateful she even responded. It was probably the closest I’ll ever get to the big time, but the positive I took was that at least my query letter had worked on someone.
It’s been a few weeks now; no interest from anyone else. And I’ve just sent that final fiftieth query.
So, if I’m honest with myself, that request may have been a fluke, but it was an interesting experience (and I got a blog post out of it :).
They say it’s the hope that kills you. But let’s face it, in the end, none of us is getting out of here alive.
I’m still dreaming; I hope you are, too.
Speak soon,
JL
PS: If you missed my last post on crafting a query letter, it’s here.
PPS: Check out my top 5 tips for writers here.
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