reading the query shark

I recently, while doing agent research, found an agent blog. it’s helpful for gaining an insight into the mind of a working agent. she’s funny, entertaining, mean. i guess it’s like hanging out with the enemy in some senses, a game everyone there understands. http://queryshark.blogspot.com/.

in the query shark part of her website she reads and critiques queries, indicating the exact moment in your pitch where she instantly rejects. here’s from a recent one (the pitch is the firrrrst paragraph, her response the second):

“In ROMA AMOR, my 190,000-word novel, that decision will force Marcus into a wrenching choice between “Amor” (love) and “Roma” (duty) – the words every Roman legionary used to carve on opposite sides of his battle knife.

Here’s where I stop reading and say “form rejection.” 190,000 words. It simply cannot be done. Not right now anyway. And before you start hurling examples of The Thorn Birds, all of James Clavell, and Gone With the Wind at me (books I read and loved) let me just say this: I’m not sure I could sell those books, at that length, today. I’m not guessing at this. I know for a stone cold fact that wonderful novels over 120,000 words get glowing rejection letters. Glowing. REJECTION. Frankly I’m not in this for rejection letters glowing or otherwise. I’m in it for sales.”

I don’t know what’s more depressing, the fact that she loved Gone With The Wind and The Thorn Birds, or her assertion that publishers won’t even look at a book by a newcomer that is over 120,000 words. I don’t know if it’s the end of civilization (that ended long ago, if it ever existed), but it is the end of the novel. without publishers, there really isn’t a novel. the two evolved together. to part company is to imagine a whole new way of reading, which, despite my wish, and wish-fulfillment dreams, doesn’t seem to be happening. people will be reading, but they won’t be reading me, or any other new authors who won’t follow senseless rules. i suppose this is a good thing, in that it encourages self-aggrandizing rebellion. it allows one to characterize the publishing industry as a bunch of close-minded, profit driven sheep who don’t care about literature at all. that circumstance has always been the womb of innovation. dare i say then that there is hope? good lord no! things are only going to get worse. well, i have to go now, my influenza infested lungs are incubating a new megavirus.