Q: 5/15/25
Marking this as CNR at 53 days as she closed end of June & then reopened without responding to the query.
Adding 08/07/25: I tried nudging about response end of July because I want to query another agent within BookEnds, but decided today to just withdraw instead and query the intended agent.
87k Crime/Thriller/Psychological

Queried: 03/06/2025
Nudged: 06/11/2025
Closed/No Response: 07/04/2025
FR: 07/20/2025

No responses are the worst but it comes with the struggle of querying. Still grateful for the opportunity to query Ms. Ramona.

Form rejection after auto-close from 121 days. Querying is not for the weak.

@Waterbear Yes, you're touching on what, in my mind, is the fundamental problem with the query process as it exists today--the first filter is essentially judging your work on your ability to do the thing that you're trying to get the agent to do for you (i.e. sell your work).

However, the reason things are the way they are is the unyielding math of agent time and query volume. It's not at all uncommon for an agent to receive 50-100 queries per week. Reading takes roughly one minute per page. So, even if you've got a Spartan query package of just a 2-page query and a 10-page sample, an agent might be able to crank through their queries at the rate of four per hour if they read everything in ever package. (Allowing some time for breaks and reflection.) That's still 12.5 to 25 hours per week, and if they do request a full, there's additional hours of reading and research.

Making matters more difficult, reading queries and fulls isn't anywhere near the most important thing agents do--reviewing contracts, meeting with editors, editorial work for current clients, crafting pitch materials, pitching client work, continuing education and the general administrative "stuff" that comes with any job all comes first. (Plus probably some other things I don't know about or haven't thought of.) So, there just isn't time in an agent's work week to read the entire contents of every query package.

While I certainly don't claim to know the details of any agent's process, the math makes it inevitable that they must stop reading most queries sometime well before they finish the package--at least if they want to get any other work done and still clear their query inbox sometime prior to the heat death of the universe.

So, there has to be some way for agents to invest just a little bit of time in the package to figure out if it's worth their time to read the rest or not. Thus, the query letter--that insanely hard to write, maddeningly incomplete piece of work that requires completely different skills from novel writing, but remains the best way anyone has thought of to show agents what you've got in a form compact enough they can actually afford the time to read it. While this means that most of the time, most of the information in your query package won't be read, the incremental cost of attaching a synopsis and sample to a query is nearly zero, since almost all the work lies in creating those two items, and you need them anyway. And if your query happens to catch the agent's attention, it's to your advantage for those items to be right there, where the agent can act on the impulse to keep reading, rather than having to request additional material and wait for your reply.

I'm not trying to be snarky or discourage anyone with this, but I think it is important for writers to understand just how heavy a lift that query letter has to perform. It's almost as hard as the fate your book will someday face when it sits on a shelf in a bookstore (or a list on an online retailer) and the cover art, title, and maybe the name of the author, try to induce a reader to read the blurbs and cover text. During those vital few seconds of attention, everything you and your marketing team has done will either convince the reader to choose your book over hundreds (thousands?) of others trying to do the same thing. Or not.

Q: 5/22
Rejection: 7/20

YA SF 90k

Form rejection: "Thank you for considering me as an agent to partner with and represent your works along your publishing journey. After careful deliberation, I've decided this story isn't the best fit for me. Best of luck with your publishing endeavors."

For anyone having the query vs sample page discussion in these comments, maybe try reddit - r/pubtips since they discuss stuff like this over there and it's a better forum for it.