Wednesday, February 8, 2017

Breaking Down 2016

Whew! 2016 was...quite a year. Politics, celebrity deaths, severely slacking on blog posts, debuts and all else aside....

Here's how my agent life stacked up in numbers for 2016:

Queries (unsolicited) rec’d:




Request rates (based on above):



This means, roughly, that I requested a partial on 6 out of every 1000, a full 8 out of every 1000, and offered on 3 out of every 1000 queries I received.

This year, I was 11% likely to request the full from a partial
I was 33% likely to make an offer on a full request

Requested genres by number:



Hot buttons: humor, science, adventure, mystery, gritty, fantasy, assassins, poison, LGBT, gothic, romance, magical realism, #ownvoice

Avg. response time: 11 weeks

THIS IS DEPLORABLE.


Months with most queries: January, August-November

Months with most requests: March-April, June-July

Most active period of offering and signing: Feb-April, June-July



My agent resolution last year was to Grow, Sell, Grow - and I really lived up to that! I was on a requesting SPREE last year; I got double the submissions but I tripled my requests and client signings. Unfortunately, I fell horribly behind in unsolicited reading and response times. Which really leads into...

My 2017 agent resolution: SELL!!!! And respond to submissions in a more timely manner. AND SELL!!!

3 comments:

  1. This is so helpful. Thank you! And good luck this year!

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  2. Natalie, this is amazing information. Thank you for giving us a window into your job, and all that you balance. It's so helpful, and truly just straight-up interesting. I'm a numbers and goals girl myself.

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