Should agents provide query feedback?

As a querying writer, I have a controversial statement to make: I don’t mind getting a form rejection. In fact, I prefer them.

* gasps all around *

* a glass shatters *

* shocked murmurs *

I know, I know, but let me explain. First of all, what do I mean by a form rejection? Well, it’s the kind of agent response that reads a little something like: ‘Dear [Author], thank you for allowing me to read [TITLE]. Unfortunately I don’t feel I am a good fit for this project, but I wish you the best of luck. Regards, [AGENT].’

On the surface, it’s devastating, right? You didn’t like my book? My precious, perfect book that I’ve been working on for years? And you don’t even have the decency to tell me why? And what’s worse is that querying is haaarrrddd. It’s not just a case of pinging off a few emails here and there. It requires researching agents, tailoring your letter to suit their MSWL, picking the right synopsis length and number of pages, following all of their guidelines, and then waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and… You get the point.

So to go through all of that, many times over, and to get a form rejection… Well, it feels a bit like a kick in the teeth, doesn’t it? I see a lot of writers on Threads bemoaning this process, asking questions like, ‘Is it really so hard to just provide a little bit of feedback so we know what we’re doing wrong?’

And I understand the sentiment, I really do. I used to ask the same question when I was new in the trenches. But as I’ve become more seasoned, and as I’ve learned more about the industry, I’ve grown to appreciate the form rejection.

But let’s start with trying to answer that question: is it really so hard for agents to provide feedback?

Why agent feedback is impractical

Before we get into the value of agent feedback, let’s cover why it’s impractical for agents to provide it in the first place. For starters, volume. Many agents receive hundreds of queries per week. Let’s be generous and assume they spend three minutes reading each submission. To get through, say, 150 submissions, that’s over seven hours of work – just in the reading. Factoring in any degree of feedback, you’d need to double, if not triple, that time per query, pushing it to 15 to 23 hours per week.

But remember, an agent’s job is not solely reading queries. They have clients that they have to prioritise. They have meetings and negotiations with editors. They have other business admin to manage. And they have lives!

I offer query package editing, and it takes me a minimum of two hours to review the whole package. Query letters alone can be upwards of 30 minutes, and likewise if not a bit longer for a synopsis. Even if agents didn’t go into the level of detail I do, it would still be an unrealistic amount of time, because if they provide feedback for one, they should do it for all, right?

But volume aside, there’s another reason why agents generally don’t give feedback: the backlash. Yes, that’s right, some authors have clapped back at agents when they’ve offered guidance on their query materials. Is it fair that a few bad apples have ruined something for everyone else? No. But nor is it fair to ask agents to endure that kind of harassment and abuse either.

Which leads me onto my next point: is the feedback even worth it?

The value of agent feedback

This is the section that might ruffle a few feathers, so I want to state upfront that I’m not saying agent feedback is useless, and to any agent who does take the time to provide personalised feedback to querying authors, I hope your pillow is always cool and that you regularly find an extra fiver in your purse you didn’t realise you had.

Right, with that out of the way, let me tell you why I don’t think getting feedback is really all that helpful. The primary reason links to my point above about volume: agents don’t have a lot of time to give personalised critique on even a handful of query packages, which means what feedback they can provide is usually generic and (ironically) form. By this I mean it’s a sort of template response with general tips and tricks.

Generic feedback can be useful. For very new writers, getting a list of common mistakes the agent sees in queries can help them tidy up their package for the next agent they submit to. However, understanding what feedback is useful to your manuscript specifically is a learned skill. If you get given a list of five or ten common pitfalls, and the agent hasn’t said which ones relate to your writing, do you have the experience to work out which ones apply and which ones don’t? And, just as importantly, do you have the knowledge and understanding to discern whether that feedback is right for you or not? Because that's another issue: feedback is subjective.

I saw a post recently from an author whose friend had fulls out with two agents. One agent sent a rejection saying that they didn’t like the narrative distance and couldn’t connect with the protagonist. The next day, the second agent emailed her with an offer, stating that she immediately connected with the character and loved the writing style.

Was the first agent’s feedback bad then? No. Not at all. It just means that the manuscript didn’t meet their criteria. It’s a matter of opinion, and it’s no different from how we choose the books we want to read. The danger in situations like this is that, after receiving this feedback, the author might have made significant changes to her manuscript to try and ‘fix’ this narrative distance issue. But that issue is only a problem for that agent – it’s not something that actually needs ‘fixing’, it’s more subjective than that.

Identifying when feedback is useful and when it’s just a matter of taste, however, is very hard, especially in the querying process where writers feel like they have to perform exactly right. Following generic feedback, or even subjective personalised feedback, can often do more damage than good.

But how am I supposed to improve without feedback?

Listen, all rejections suck. There’s no two ways about it. You might think that getting feedback in a rejection will soften the blow, but it can actually make you feel worse. Think about it; you query your ‘dream agent’ (more on that terminology in a future blog) and get a rejection that says something about your pacing not being quite right. Can you do something about that? Sure! Can you query this agent again afterwards? Not if they haven’t explicitly said you can (called a Revise and Resubmit). So now you’re left thinking that if only you’d fixed this earlier, you’d have landed your dream agent – and that’s just not a healthy way to think about it.

I actually think Kate McKean, agent and author of the Agents + Books newsletter, explains this really well. In a post on Threads, she asked authors to critique her form rejection, and while most of the comments were favourable, one comment stood out to me. A writer used the phrase ‘I can’t grow from a response like this’, to which Kate replied, ‘I hear you completely. If I had the time, I would love to offer feedback. But I can’t. Consider that a query rejection isn’t the point of contact that will lead to real growth as a writer. There are better places for that.’

Querying isn’t the place to improve as a writer. Feedback on your manuscript or query materials should come from alpha or beta readers, or from critique partners, or from paid editors (though let me make it clear that you do not need to pay for professional editing before you submit to agents). These are the people who have the time and – hopefully – the expertise to give you nuanced, personalised critique.

The real reason writers want feedback

You want feedback because you want to believe that there’s an exact right way to craft a book or a query package that will land you that coveted ‘yes’. You want to turn this complicated, subjective, frustrating process into something neat and tidy and sensical. I get it. It’s so much easier to accept that you got a rejection because you used bad comp titles, or your synopsis was formatted wrong. Those are fixable issues. What are you supposed to do with, ‘This wasn’t for me, sorry’? How can you fix not being the right fit for the agent at this time?

The truth is, you can’t. And that’s okay.

At the end of the day, while you might think that getting feedback from agents will solve all your problems, I would be willing to bet a lot of money that it won’t. Because it’s often not just ‘this one simple thing’ that needs changing – if it was, the agent wouldn’t reject, they’d send an R&R!

As annoying as it might sound, rejections really often are just a case of the agent not vibing with your manuscript. And again – that’s okay! It’s not a reflection of you or your writing. If, by some miracle, you do get feedback from an agent on your query materials, by all means implement that if what they’ve commented on resonates with you and you genuinely feel it will improve your work. But not getting feedback isn’t some great travesty either.

Querying is subjective. Publishing is not a meritocracy. Rejections are part of the process. It’s really not much deeper than that.