The Rejection Letter

When you start sending your novel off to Agents, you can spend hours researching the folks you want to send it to; building tracker spreadsheets, crafting the perfect submission letter, and, if you're like me, crying through the agony of the synopsis.

Then you visit their websites, which encourage you to do your research: To read the books they like, to research the fit, to choose a specific agent. To pick your comparisons carefully - to put your soul into the letter And that totally makes sense.

Then you have to look at what they want: 3 chapters, 5k words, the whole book, or only the first chapter. A synopsis of: a page, 2 pages, 300 words, 2 paragraphs. The endless possibilities of requirements are like a cruel and unusual torture. But authors get through it. You have to meet the gatekeepers' needs after all.

You research, you compose, you add attachments, and you triple-check that you have everything right for that agent. You re-read the letter, again and again and again. Then finally you press send and maybe re-read the letter ---- to find that one stupid spelling mistake you missed.

Arghhhhh!

Then you wait.

    And wait.

       And wait

         And wait.

Then anywhere from 2 hours to 4 months later you get a response - if you're lucky.

It's more often a template email. The rejection ones, anyway. Normally, Dear 'Your name'. Sometimes a couple of brief pre-written paragraphs - the content normally: not for us; don't lose hope. It's all personal taste. Good luck with your search; we get so many submissions we can't provide feedback, and so on. 

And that's fine.

People are awful at writing rejection letters - so the template, I guess, saves them time and effort? The same time and effort they want the author to put into writing the letter? Well, let's not think about that.

All of that is better than silence, though, right? 

But when you get a rejection letter that simply says

'Dear Author'

You do take a breath and shake your head. Maybe suppress feelings of 'what the hell?' After all my effort, you can't even be bothered to use my name? But then you have to wonder, did you dodge a bullet? If they care that little about the author submitting that their template email didn't even use your name?

.....Maybe?

There are so many Agents out there - the right fit for you is you hope out there. So the rejection letter - aside from being obviously disappointing - maybe there is more to it than first meets the eye? It might actually also point to a relationship that wouldn't work anyway.