Somehow, this makes me feel better...
Saturday, December 19, 2009 at 2:52PM
Agent Kristin posted her stats for this year: 38,000 queries, 55 full requests, 6 new clients. The numbers are daunting but somehow give me comfort. This means .00016% of the queries got representation if my math is correct. So if you get that rejection in the mail, remember it doesn't necessarily mean you suck (although you certainly could), it just means you weren't the lucky one in 6300 to get an offer. I guess agents aren't lying when they say they have to absolutely fall in love to make an offer.
Also, thanks for all the well wishes from everyone. My husband's knee surgery went well, so now it's just the journey of getting through the recovery phase. And playing nurse with a rambunctious two-year old trying to "help" with everything is very interesting, lemme tell you.
Hope everyone has a great weekend!
"#1 Crush" - Garbage
Reader Comments (11)
Fascinating numbers. I had no idea. Only six new clients out of all those queries. WoW!
Hope the knee recovery goes well. My sis-in-law had that a few years back, she said it was pretty painful but now her knees are much better.
It also makes you appreciate the fact that they are so careful to filter out the stuff that we probably wouldn't want to read either. They have it kinda rough in my opinion.
Those numbers are daunting. Yikes!
Glad to hear the surgery went well. Have fun playing nurse Roni!
1 in 6300... Whoa. Does that mean if we query 6301 times we're in? ;-)
Glad to hear your husband's surgery went well.
Wow, I had no idea the numbers would look like that. Makes me wish that I had a crystal ball to tell me which agents will fall in love with my work:)
Wow. That does make me feel a lot better.
I definitely just bookmarked this for when I start querying and... sigh... getting rejections, haha.
Shannon - I like the way you think :)
It's amazing how statistics can help you get through this process. One of my favorite questions to ask published authors how many "no's" it took to get to their "yes". So far the highest that I've heard was 149 - and she's since been on the best seller list. I like the higher numbers, they help me swallow each individual "no" with a piece of hope.
It is daunting, isn't it?
When I was on my second agent hunt, I used Query Tracker, and they have greats stats on the query success rate for their agents listed there. It was comforting in some ways, to see I wasn't alone on the rejection train, and made it all that much sweeter when I finally beat the odds.
Wow, that puts things in mathematical perspective...and it IS encouraging in its own way. :)
I like those stats too. It also means that you are really deserving when you get that offer and can really celebrate what an achievement that is.
All the best with the nurse thing. I know all about two year olds :)