Is a Quick or Slow Response Time a Sign?
Q. I submitted a query to an agent (with the exact info she requested from the WM site). I expected a response in 3 weeks. I got a very detailed…
Q. I submitted a query to an agent (with the exact info she requested from the WM site). I expected a response in 3 weeks. I got a very detailed and polite rejection e-mail 7 hours later. Should I take this as some sort of negative sign? 7 hours?
A: I'd say no because response time is a huge crap shoot anyway.
If you send your query three hours before an agent tackles some of the slush pile, you're in luck. Then again, the agent might be wrapped up in some big-money auctions and projects with so much at stake that they won't even think about reading queries for weeks. There's little rhyme or reason to it. But I do feel that no matter if you get a reply in twenty minutes or four months, that doesn't reflect on the query itself. Keep sending that baby out there.
Chuck Sambuchino is a former editor with the Writer's Digest writing community and author of several books, including How to Survive a Garden Gnome Attack and Create Your Writer Platform.
