I was surfing agent websites last week and came upon one that said the agent hoped to reply to every query, but could only promise to reply to the queries that sparked her interest. This got me thinking about my agent searches in the past and the “No Response Means We’re Not Interested” practice. While I understand how busy agents are and the quantity of queries they receive, I do wish there was a way a writer could at least receive acknowledgement that her query has been logged. It’s terribly frustrating to wait four – six months for a reply only to follow up and discover that the agent didn’t receive the query in the first place. Can not the query email address send out an automated “Your query has been received” message? You know, like the messages you receive when the person you’ve emailed has gone out of town?
As it so happens, BookEnds agent Jessica Faust opened up her blog yesterday to complaints about agents. I only had time to scan the Comment trail, and lo and behold one of the most major complaints was this “No Response Means We’re Not Interested” practice, when, for a writer, “No Response” might and can mean, “You’re Lost in My Spam Filter,” or “I Know It’s Been Ten Months, But I’m Still Undecided about the Partial.” The same idea I suggest here was suggested several times. Why NOT set up a special email address for queries and then have that email address automatically respond to every query with a form “We’ve Received Your Query and Will Get Back to You if We’re Interested” note?
See, we can understand not receiving a reply after our original query has been acknowledged. It’s not knowing if the query even arrived that causes the frustration.
If anyone can think of cons to automated replies to email queries, feel free to list them here.
By the way, I don’t believe BookEnds practices “No Response = Lack of Interest.” When I scanned the Comments trail of Jessica’s post, it reminded me that I had this post in my Drafts folder, so I dug it out. Timing is everything, doncha know?