One of the questions people ask me when I shout humbly tell them the good news that I’ve just signed with a literary agent is:

How many times were you rejected?

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this question. Seriously, I’m not being sarcastic. Because not long after I signed with my agent, I actually sat down and went through emails, spreadsheets, and query tracker and figured out just how many rejections I did receive. It’s kind of complicated, because this is the second book I’ve queried. Because not all rejections were as dramatic as non-writers may think. A lot were just non-responses. And because with my first book, after I did a major overhaul I queried some of the same agents twice (to no success).

So I’ve broken it down below:

First Book: The Road Unraveled

First Query: June 14, 2012
Last Query: June 23, 2014
Total Query Length: 2 years (this doesn’t include time off I took to revise. Several months in this two year span were spent on revision)

Responded with Rejection from Query: 71
Closed – No Response: 39
Partial Requests (later rejected): 4
Full Requests (later rejected): 3
Total TRU Rejections: 117

There are a lot more rejections for this one because, as I mentioned, I submitted to some of the same agents more than once. Still got a “nah.”

Second Book: Less to Carry

Pitched at conference (a wee bit before it was ready for querying): July 19, 2014
First Query: October 13, 2014
Last Query: September 1, 2015
Total Query Length: 1 year, 1 month

Rejections from Query: 34
Closed – No Response: 27
Partial Requests (later rejected): 4
Full Requests (later rejected): 5
No Response after a Full Request (yeah, that happened. Fun.): 1
Revise and Resubmit: 1
Total LTC Rejections: 72

Combined Total Rejections for Both Books: 189

Offers of Representation: 1

And that’s all I needed!

(Hidden moral of the post – Keep. Going.)