Okay, so agents, etc., generally say in their chatter "Don't mention you placed in the ABNA contest because there are hundreds of finalists and the contest doesn't mean much to us."
That was the message since cycle one. It carried on in cycle two. We'll see if it does so in cycle three.
Over in the ABNA-related forums someone noted this:
Jarucia has made it through with the same manuscript all three years, so obviously it's good. Why doesn't a publisher pick her up???!!!
Yeah, why hasn't anyone.
Okay, maybe ABNA isn't the Cadillac or Porsche or whatever of literary contests, but that doesn't mean there isn't serious thought about its process and it is run in conjunction with Publisher's Weekly and Penguin, and I suppose those two outfits know a bit about the book business.
The first year my manuscript was a wreck and still made it through.
Year two, I did serious rework and had to rely on the laurels of, first, my pitch, THEN my excerpt, THEN manuscript to make it to Top 100 of a possible 10,000...
This year I reworked even more and I've cleared the pitch and excerpt hurdles thus far...
This much seems to indicate I should get 'call-back's' from agents at least, but nada.
I don't get it.
It leaves me feeling completely out of control over something that I'm supposed to doggedly work at until the planets align.
I will, of course, but still...I wonder when it will happen.
Peace
A Pink American
Odd, though...
ReplyDeleteI've been mentioning my placement in query letters. And there's been a definite uptick in requests for partials or fulls. Just a coincidence?
Dunno, but it certainly hasn't hurt anything.
Agents make judgements based on their impressions. So they're very subjective. If they hear 'ABNA...ABNA...ABNA...ABNA...' from one submission after another they're going to get sick of the sound of it. So they're not necessarily going to listen to what you're actually saying.
ReplyDelete