: Re: When do you stop "pushing" a book? Let's suppose you have finished your novel, through all the appropriate stages of drafting and editing needed. You begin submitting the book to various agents

@Bethany377

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I have heard that the number of queries you should expect to write is somewhere between 100 and 250. However, if you're not getting the kind of response you're expecting there are a few things you can double check on. Basically, this is a list of things to consider that might indicate whether you should keep going or stop.

You can find someone who has had success in the industry and see if there's a flaw in your query letter. A lot of writing conferences will present you opportunities to do this if you network well. And a lot of these conferences will have sessions on how to write good query letters or what not to do. If it's a problem with your query letter, well, that should be a 1 pager problem. Much easier to solve. Keep sending those Queries out.
It is possible you haven't done your research and are applying incorrectly or to the wrong people. Are you sending your query to agents and editors who work with your target audience? This requires looking at acknowledgements in books, websites of the people you have been sending queries to. If you're breaking the rules on an agent's website, they won't read your work. If you send a horror novel to a romance agent, they won't read your work. If you've been sending to the right people and you've sent it out to tons of them, there may be a problem with the work itself.
Perhaps its the story you are actually presenting. Consult writing friends who have had more success. A query letter is not necessarily your entire book. It should represent an interesting hook that gets the person to want to request and read pages. It should not obfuscate or betray what your work is, but it should be engaging. Maybe you wrote your query about the wrong things. Write a new query and keep going.
Maybe your work itself has flaws and the query letter is an indicator of that. Today, publishers and agents want finished works that are ready to sell. You can find freelance editors and the like. If you really believe in your work, maybe you're willing to put some money down. This isn't for everyone and anyone reading this should think long and hard before doing it. There are a lot of people who want to make a dollar. Finding a good editor who can actually help you may not be easy. Finding one who won't lie to you and treat you like a vanity project might be difficult. But it could be productive. It could also be expensive and a waste of money. But it's a way to know and possibly grow. Just because you've finished a book doesn't mean you've written a good one and there are plenty of writing groups who like the ability to give constructive feedback.
Try to hand sell your work at a conference. If you can't pitch it verbally, there's probably something wrong with your query. It may become obvious based on the questions people ask. Maybe you're saying the wrong things. Maybe you're confusing. Maybe something doesn't translate or you are leading your prospective audience in the wrong direction.
Find that friend who is brutally honest, appreciates the kind of work you are tyring to write, and has plenty of time to read and ask them: Do you think this should be on a book store shelf? If they can't tell you no, they aren't the right person to ask. If they tell you it needs more work, listen to them. Make sure you're ready for this. It might be world shattering.
Ask yourself: Is my time best spent trying to propagate this work or the next one one I'm planning to write? If you've hit the kind of numbers people have talked about and revision hasn't gotten you anywhere; editing hasn't gotten you anywhere; and you're not getting bites it's probably time to consider moving on. You can double down on the project again. You can go back and do more re-writes. But it's possible the story you have is either flawed or too hard to sell. Think about what you've learned. Think about what you could write that might be easier to sell. And, if you're not totally in love with what you've been doing, put it in a trunk and move on. You can always use elements of what you've done in the past that are unpublished in future works.

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