Having finished the manuscript for No Tears for Old Scratch, I’ve been hard at work trying to find an agent to represent the novel to publishers. I have already self-published my work, including one collection of short stories and several e-books, with a great distribution network for an independent author, but for this novel, I wanted to take it to a larger audience. I feel it’s a bigger book (and a nice step up for me as a writer). Thanks to a little hard work on a well-crafted query letter and working some connections with publishing industry friends, I’ve actually been getting very good responses from agents. As anyone who has gone through this process knows, the usual response to a query is:

“This is not for me – but thanks for the opportunity!”

I always like when an agent responds with enthusiasm (!) when rejecting a query. Or there is the British version:

“Thank you for your submission, which we have read with interest. Unfortunately we did not feel enthusiastic enough about it to take this further. We are sorry to give you a disappointing response but thank you for thinking of us in connection with your work.”

Or the even shorter:

“Not for me, but thanks.”
Continue reading →