[Discussion] Zero Requests

So, I've come to the end of my querying journey. It's been nearly 6 months, 70 agents queried, and not a single request or even personalised rejection. They've all timed out beyond 3 months now, except for a couple of later submissions who I have very little hope for.

I'm honestly quite mystified and down about it. I had beta readers - both friends and strangers who read the genre - who loved the book (and I incorporated the feedback they did have). I had a trad published mentor who also read it and helped me with my query letter. I workshopped the query letter some more. I worked on my opening pages endlessly. Had another successful trad published author read my query and opening and with some minor tweaks said it was extremely polished. I've been writing for 15+ years, so while it is my first book, this was not my first rodeo (I wrote as a screenwriter for a long time).

I still love my book. I get that perhaps it's not 'hooky' enough for todays market, but can objectively say it's well written, extremely well structured (this is my strength, but sadly, the agents never got to read that far), has strong characters and, I think, relevant and contemporary themes.

I'm probably going to self publish, because I still really believe in it, but I just can't believe how tough all the rejection is. From reading around, it sounds like 90% of queries don't even hit the basics, so it's really depressing that after all this work no agents even wanted to read the whole thing.

Feel free to remove this post as it's not really asking for anything specific, other than some support and community in this tough time of querying! I'd be interested in others' stories of similar situations and what they did with their book too. Putting in a draw to rot just feels like a waste.