This long holiday weekend I tried to catch up with the workload that had grown like Topsy due to two bookfairs coming hot one after another. We once worked out that a film or bookfair really take three weeks of your life: one week preparing, one week travelling and being there, and a week following up. I have not started my Torino bookfair follow-up yet. I was intending to do it this weekend but other things happened like delightful visits from an 18 month old grandson. So I didn’t catch up with the office as much as I had hoped but I had a great time nevertheless.
Part of that catch up was to be chasing submissions where we have not heard from producers or publishers. Some, sadly, never respond at all unless they are chased (I will come to that in a minute). Others are meticulous and fast. Usually the faster the response the more likely it is to be a rejection.
Agents tend to become inured to rejections, well of other people’s work that is. No matter how much you love someone’s writing, how much you have worked with them on draft after draft, or how important you know it is to their financial stability to get a deal, it nevertheless does not hurt as much as a personal rejection, if for no other reason than as we are making submissions for 200 clients, we get many rejections.
Our overseas agents also make submissions on behalf of ourselves and our clients, which we don’t necessarily know about until we get a list of rejections and – often enough – a successful sale accompanied by the rejections.
I recall many years ago one book that in various drafts of the first chapters was rejected about 40 times over several years (including three times by the publisher who bought it) before being sold for £5,000. When paperback rights were offered by the hardback publisher they went for £100,000, a then record I believe for a first novel.
Telling writers about the rejections is never enjoyable, partly because it seems to be a failure by the agent and because you know it hurts. Some writers want to be told every grisly detail; other don’t want any details.
I know that many writers are very focussed on their own book or script, as they should be. So every day that goes by makes them wonder if anything is happening to their work. I suppose it is like letting your child go on a first date and worrying about what is happening. Like the joke about the mother pacing up and down because her daughter is on a first date. “Don’t worry,” says the father, “…she is a big girl.” “I know that,” says the mother, “…but she is out with a big boy.”
I wonder if writers know how often we have to chase submissions to get responses? What a waste of time that is, except if I am to be honest, I also need chasing so before any of you yell that I took ages to read something you submitted to me, I hold my hand up. Like most agents I have to prioritise existing clients. We get over 7,000 submissions from writers a year wanting to join the agency. Thankfully I don’t get 7,000 – there are six of us.
I try to read material from clients fast but even then I sometimes miss, either because of the travelling or because things do fall between the cracks. I am hoping to be far-better organised with the iRex electronic book I am trying out. It is the only e-book you can write on (I scribble notes all the time so a conventional e-reader will not do). I have started downloading everything I need to read so I have it all to hand. No excuses, except finding time.
After a 9 or 10 hour office day there has to be some family time and some time for TwelvePoint (I still read and edit every article at least three times) , blogging and compiling the Buzz for our members (which I am also slower on than I would like to be) before the script and manuscript reading can start, which is why I take longer than I would like to read work by writers who are not clients. What tends to make me speed up the process is knowing that they have been produced or published, that they work in or near the media, that they are very businesslike and have got good, commercial ideas and the first few pages read wonderfully.
Even then I still have to reject some writers whose writing I really like and who come across as great people to know (for us that is an important factor as is the opposite – writers who come across as difficult, pedantic, inflexible are likely to get rejected even if they write like angels).
But I would like to apologise for taking so long to all of you who feel I have taken too long. I wish it were otherwise. The submissions that are obviously inappropriate to me or the agency are easier to reject quickly. It is the close shaves that take longer precisely because they need more time to think about them or to share them with a colleague. The best advice I can give you (but don’t tell anyone I said so) is that even when agency websites say they won’t read if material is submitted to other agents, don’t tell anyone. The worst that can happen is that two agents want you. That is something you will find a way to deal with.
Julian