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I wish I had an answer to that one....probably better to use the latest catch phrase. But then, I am jaded. Seems the best way is to make friends with someone they know. I did have a full manuscript request from an agent but when I checked in four months later she said she hadn't had time to read it. Never heard another word. I have had four or five agents give me good feedback, even with a rejection; one other mauscript request but nothing further. Three agents I met at a conference, one was a friend of a friend, the other three were blind submissions. It's a crap shoot. What I've been doing lately is looking at who they publish, read a blurb from a recent book on Amazon 'Look inside', and see if it's something I'd want to read. If not, then I doubt they'd want to read what I've written. Carefully selecting the right agent to query is key but so is timing, I think. Jericho seems like a good venue to get 'there'. I've learned so much from their webinars and the Summer Festival. Thank goodness for it during Covid!
Also, writing a single sentence that describes your story will help you hone your pitch. You can embellish, but I find it helpful, for myself, to put the concept in as succinct a way as possible and build from there. Good luck!
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Thanks. I've gotten the query and synopsis written. I'm letting them stew for a bit (since I'm making slow-cooker beef stew for dinner) before tackling them with a full rewrite (using feedback from here). I'm working with the Agent Match on JW though there's a few out of date. It helping me create a short list. I'll be reviewing each agent over the next week to see how likely they are to be a match. You're right, it's a crap shoot but I've already racked up 5 delivered rejections (one with a typo and one telling me I wasn't Stephen King because I submitted a horror query for a 200k book) and 9 'silent' rejections. Each one stings but now that I have a story worth submitting, I'm ready to go at it again.
Thanks for the encouragement. Every little bit helps.
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