The dreaded query silence.

[Carrie Graves]

I know it sounds crazy, but I wish more agencies would send form rejections. Not to me, of course! Haha. No, really. Don't you think rejection should be treated like band-aids? Rip it quick, so you can shed a tear and move on. I hate my queries that just hang out there in cyberspace. And it seems to me that more agencies are dealing with it this way.

Hellllooooo? Is anybody out there?

[Dana]

I know it sounds crazy, but I wish more agencies would send form rejections. Not to me, of course! Haha. No, really. Don't you think rejection should be treated like band-aids? Rip it quick, so you can shed a tear and move on. I hate my queries that just hang out there in cyberspace. And it seems to me that more agencies are dealing with it this way.

Hellllooooo? Is anybody out there?

It's a numbers game. Send it out to scores of them at the same time. That way the odds are slightly better in your favour.

[Lea Zalas]

It's only one of MANY reasons why so many are now considering or are now uploading their stories in ebook format, skipping the agent completely. Many of these people (I was formally included in this group) hoped to one day be one of the millions to be chosen by an agent and a publisher. But as I read some of the drivel being published, and knowing that many really good novels are passed by, I quickly changed my mind.

Whether to go the traditional route or the ebook route is up to you, but the decision about what people really want to read is being made by the readers themselves as they download their reading choices to their electronic reading devices.

[L C]

My personal experience with both publishers and agents is that when they're interested you hear from them FAST. When they're not, you either never hear or get your R months later.

To elaborate on my personal experience even more: if you don't hear back within three hours of sending an email, or a few days of sending a hard copy, it's an R.

YMMV.

[Jena Grace]

I know it sounds crazy, but I wish more agencies would send form rejections. Not to me, of course! Haha. No, really. Don't you think rejection should be treated like band-aids? Rip it quick, so you can shed a tear and move on. I hate my queries that just hang out there in cyberspace. And it seems to me that more agencies are dealing with it this way.

Hellllooooo? Is anybody out there?

I agree, Carrie. I'd rather get a fast NO than not hear back for months, or at all.

That said, after I signed with an agent, I received a request for a full ms from another agent, one I would have been thrilled to work with, and this was months after I sent the query. So there is no way to predict. Lately it seems that queries that garner no interest are simply met with...silence.