Like many independent literary agencies, mine is small, with no more than 50 active clients at any given time. Yet even we receive at least 50 query letters every week. Potentially, we could replace our entire client list—which has been nearly 20 years in the making—every week of the year. And by the end of every year, we’ve read, processed, answered, thrown away, cried over, winced at, yawned over or gotten excited about nearly 3,000 query letters.
Out of those 3,000 pleas, nearly 75 percent are for novels. And out of those, at least 90 percent are for first novels. That brings the number of queries from debut authors to about 2,000 every year. Most years, I accept one new novelist as a client out of those 2,000. That’s not…