Feeling the vacuum
As a writer most of the endeavour is isolated hope that what you are doing is what you meant. That the story characters, prose and language convey the world, places and events you imagined to a reader. It is a leap of faith in your ability to write and to write well. This is nevermore tested than when you submit your work to literary agents, the gatekeepers of the publishing world ultimately looking at marketing and potential sales markets and income. That is looking backwards at what has worked, what is trending and following the market. There seem to be few market leaders or market makers. Each new book offered up to an agent is a possible future genre but gambling is a risky business and I am getting the impression that too many agents are risk averse or focused on niche.
I have submitted to 22 agents to date and have many more lined up. So far I have only had two actual responses, rather than automated emails for receipt. Both short but polite rejections. The majority of presumed rejections have simply passed the agents’ 8 or 12 weeks window for ‘If we have not responded to you in …’ etc.. It is very much a vacuous place with no one offering a little oxygen in the unpublished writer’s space. My next trick is going to take some agencies from the middle and the other end of the alphabetical array. I suspect that those at the beginning get the most bombardment, like Google searches with few progressing to the subsequent pages of the search results. Meanwhile the research for the next volume and its writing continue.
Sardonnick's View 