: 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

@Gonzalez219

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The most likely explanation is that your queries are poorly written, or the agents you are querying are poorly suited to your work (or feel they are after reading your query).

If you are getting rubber-stamp rejections, look online for lessons in writing queries; one example is at Query Letter, but there are many such sites.

I would also look for agents at Agent Query and at Manuscript Wish List, so you can find agents suited to your genre. There are other resources online as well.

For submissions; the advice (from agents) is to submit a query to about six agents at a time, so you can look for feedback. If you get none, learn more about writing queries and revise. If you get feedback with your rejections, revise your query. Do NOT send out the same query to more agents!

By submitting to a handful at a time, you give yourself room to adapt, revise, and learn what you need to know to write a successful query.

This is a case of "judging a book by its cover", in this case: It's cover letter, which is your query. Remember, agents are looking for ANY unprofessionalism in your query. Any mis-formatting, any mis-spelling, any weird grammar or word choices.

In their mind, the query letter is a sample of your writing skill and ability to follow the rules; and they are looking for a reason to reject queries because they don't want to work for an author they have to babysit, or a prima donna, or somebody that can't be bothered to check their own spelling. They want somebody that can write a tight half page description of their work that intrigues them; because if you can't write that, why should they think you can write a whole book?

Agents love new writers. Published writers are hard to come by, they already have agents. New writers are up for grabs. Unfortunately, this is a "buyer's market", the supply of wannabe writers is far larger than the population that agents could actually represent. So they don't make the mistake of confusing "unpublished writer" with "amateur writer", they want to represent new writers that seem immediately publishable, with very little work on their end, other than representation. And that means rejecting about 95% of queries.

Your query letter (and any sample pages permitted with the query) need to reflect that you are in the 5%.

One reason publishers consider the recommendation of most agents very carefully is because the agents act as a filter for them and typically can be trusted to bring them quality work. You have to work to not get snagged by that filtering process.

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