It’s that time again, and this time, it’s not so good.

1. Potential Agents Identified: 29. As usual, that’s probably low-balling it a bit.
2. Query Letters Sent: 23. That includes one letter sent directly to a publisher, who’s actively soliciting un-agented manuscripts.
3. Rejection Letters Received: 15, including one from the agent who had requested a partial manuscript. That’s the “ouch.”
4. Ignored Queries: 0. I’ve moved the three I had in that category into the clear rejections category. Right now, all of my queries have been either rejected, have been responseless for at least a month more than the recipient claims is their dead-by date, or are still well within the live-query zone.
5. Manuscript Requests: 0. The one request I had has been moved to rejections.

Where does that leave me?

Well, obviously, my basic query wasn’t working. A 1-in-8 manuscript request rate wasn’t great, a 1-in-15 rate is flat-out terrible.

So I’ve reworked my query – I’ve added comparables and a short bio, and I’ve rewritten part of the pitch (there was some awkward phrasing in there that I’m very glad I fixed.) We’ll see how it goes.