How would you respond to agent reply?

by Sonya Kar
13th December 2013

I submitted my work to a handful of agents, having not taken a professional edit or review.

3 rejections so far, the most promising on the top. Would you reply to the agent's reply listed under no.1? Juts sharing battle scars!

1: I've now had a chance to look at your submission and while I was (sic) very much liked and admired the work (and your writing!) I wasn't confident that I could secure a home for it - (it's a tough subject matter to place and

perhaps I'm not brave enough) but if you were to write something else

please keep me in mind.

I am sorry to disappoint.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to take a look and I hope that

other agents/publishers think differently.

2: Many thanks for being in touch regarding your novel. While I enjoyed reading your synopsis and sample chapters I wasn’t entirely convinced that the overall concept of the novel is quite unique or captivating enough for us to feel confident that we could represent your book successfully in what is currently a very challenging market. As a small agency we are only ever able to take on a handful of new writers providing we feel fully confident. To that end I’m afraid we cannot offer you representation but we do wish you the best of luck.

3:Received one day after submitting 3 sample chapters, Cover letter and synopsis, ‘Thank you for sending us this material, which we have now read and considered. But we are sorry to say that your novel is not something we would feel 100% confident of being able to handle successfully.

However, there are as many opinions as there are agents and publishers, so we wish you all success in finding suitable representation elsewhere.”

Replies

They all are very much the same things.... does not suit our criteria. If your confidence in your final edit carry on sending them out.

Wishing you lots of success.

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damien
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damien Isaak
14/12/2013

I agree with Adrian, they do sound quite similar.

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Sandra
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Sandra Egger
14/12/2013

The agents responses are similar, which makes me think that they are standard diplomatic rejections.

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Adrian
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Adrian Sroka
13/12/2013