Why Aren’t Literary Agents Responding to My Query Letter?

Back in the old times, before memes and author TikTok and Elons destroying the Twitter brand by renaming it X like a conqueror toppling the statue of the former leader, writers would snail mail their query letters to fancy New York City literary agents–with, like, you know, paper and envelopes and stamps–and you won’t believe what happened next.

This might be a hard pill to swallow for you Zoomer authors, but despite this barbaric, painstaking, torturously manual process of sending physical query letters in the real world, literary agents–I’m not kidding–actually responded! In a timely fashion! It was magic, I tell ya! Magic!

Now, though, we live in a publishing dystopia. Wonder Boys meets A Clockwork Orange. Gone are the days of personalized rejections and timely form responses bathed in the warm golden sunlight we tend to project onto our nostalgic memories. Now it’s “no response means no” policies and three-month wait times on full manuscript requests.

Instead of sending professional business emails, we now fill out Query Manager forms like we’re high schoolers applying for a job at McDonald’s.

Instead of literary agents staying in their non-creative lane, we search their Manuscript Wish Lists, allowing them to dictate the story concepts.

We participate in Twitter pitch events like thousands of Swifties frantically holding up signs hoping to get attention from Taylor.

We awkwardly try to go viral on TikTok because, let’s face it, the mark of a great writer is owning the newest iPhone and being photogenic.

We OMEGALUL when literary agents take to Twitter to roast the query letters of other authors.

We congratulate agents when they say, “Omg I’ve only been open to queries for 48 hours and I have 1,000 queries in my inbox! I’m so cool! It’s all about MEEEEE!!!”

The hashtag writing community is dead, folks, and literary agents killed it.

My advice? Don’t follow agents on social media. Don’t engage with them. Mute them. Block them. Run them outta town.

Boycott Manuscript Wish List.

Prioritize agents who aren’t active on Twitter and who still accept email queries.

Don’t query agents who use Query Manager if the form requires you to answer a bunch of stupid, irrelevant questions.

There are still literary agents out there who will respond to your query letter in a timely fashion, but they’re going to be the ones who aren’t popping up in your newsfeed.

Or is that wishful thinking?

I don’t know. I’m cranky today.

Tory

I am a freelance developmental editor who self-promotes at the end of every blog post. See my manuscript critique and editing services page to learn more.