replying to agent rejections

[Hilary]

What’s your experience? What are your thoughts?
I’ve been submitting to agents this summer and had a few full requests (all subsequently declined) and several other declines. Initially I replied (just thank you) to the ones who’d requested the full, and one or two others I’d met, and not to the others since I’d read somewhere that agents don’t want their inboxes clogged up with unnecessary emails. Then I saw a tweet from an agent saying it was rude to ignore it if she responded. So I’ve just gone all through my messages and made sure I replied to all! Now I have some auto responses saying thanks for your submission!
In future I think I’ll just send a brief thank you – which would be my instinct anyway. It’s polite.
Still waiting for a few more replies… Maybe one of them will be THE ONE!

[Athelstone]

Do you mean that you sent a ‘thank you’ to the agents after they declined? I haven’t done that in the past. Not that I’ve made many submissions lately.

[JaneShuff]

I’ve generally replied in the past to agents who have read the full and the type of reply has depended on the type of mail they’ve sent. if it’s been a fairly short ‘not for us’, I’ve just thanked them but if they’ve gone to the bother of giving me some feedback, I’ve normally thanked them for it specifically and told them how much I valued it, which is nothing but the truth!

[Raine]

Hurrah for the fulls, Hil. A great sign, even if they don’t lead anywhere (yet). I’ve heard the ‘don’t reply to a form rejection’ from a lot of agents, so I’ve never done that. If the rejection is noticeably personalised, then I’ve sent a quick thankyou, and I always thank them after a full MS rejection. After moping for a bit!
I’d also guess that if its a centralised submissions email address, rather than to the agent in person, any reply will just get deleted without the agent seeing it, so there’s limited point in that case.

[Jonathan]

I’ve always sent quick responses, even for rejects (“Thank you for yor time”, etc) – I think it’s out of habit, I guess, though nobody’s complained – yet 🙂

[RichardB]

It’s never even occurred to me to reply to form rejections. What’s the point? Who’d bother to read it? I can’t speak for any other circumstances, because I’ve never been there (sob).

[Hilary]

Thanks, all. I think from now on I won’t reply to form rejections. Certainly I shouldn’t have done it so long after I received them. It was just that tweet making me think I’d been rude! Perhaps she wasn’t talking about form rejections.

[Author]

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