Arch, arch, arch, breathe!

Back on the submission horse I climb, sending off a new round of queries for The Last Track. I will now–unless one extends an offer of representation before December, that is–easily reach my resolution of pitching the project to fifty agents this year, though a higher final total for 2007 is quite possible.

A few factors sharply curtailed response times, while boosting the numbers of request for material over my previous efforts, and reducing the number of never-bothered-to-respond replies. More importantly, I felt a lot better about the process.

1) Letting go of the pages. I severed all expectations an agent will ever mail back a manuscript, or a partial request for material, even should I include sufficient postage for its return. Therefore I do not send another envelope for this purpose. These pages are going somewhere after sending them off, but wherever that is, they ain’t coming back to me.

2) Enclosing a self-sealing SASE envelope for a reply. No, a SASE will not cut it. Agents and interns do not want to lick 10,000 sticky strips of glue shut. They do not want to keep dabbing a sponge in water to close envelopes and mucking up their copy of Publisher’s Weekly, or worse, their cocaine. All they want is that letter gone and off their desk so they can move on to the other 9,999. Make it frightfully easy for them for them to reply, and odds are the response–whatever it may be–will come faster.

3) Query letter. Has to be tight, tight, tight with a great hook. Run it by a few dozen people and listen to their feedback. Sleep on it. Then revise again. Fortunately, these letters are brief, so writing an effective one takes a lot less time than getting the manuscript right.

A few shifts in my approach increased the response rate for manuscripts from less than 60 percent for The Ridge Runner to nearly 80 percent for The Last Track with a turnaround averaging six weeks. Remember, that’s a fully manual process and includes round trips to their office and back to me via the United States Postal Service. Requests for The Last Track are running about 15 percent, well above average and higher than for The Ridge Runner.

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