Thread: acknowledgment of e-mail query receipt

It appears that most, if not all, agents have moved to accepting e-mail queries. In fact, now many will only accept queries via e-mail. I understand an agent makes no money reading queries that just take time away from their job of working with their clients. When most agents required snail may queries they almost always specified they would not respond unless provided with a SASE. Obviously. there is no way to do this with e-mail. My issue is that when an e-mail query is sent, you never know if it was received, let alone read. Is there some polite way to ask an agent to acknowledge receipt of an e-mail query? Is it okay to click on the box to request a receipt or read conformation?

I would just do a "read receipt" thing with my own email (there are a couple of free email services that offer a read receipt feature; unfortunately gmail doesn't! ).

I would not specifically ask an editor/agent/publisher to acknowledge my unsolicited query; take that with some salt, because I never send out queries, BUT I've done something a lot like that, which is send recorded songs to entities such as night clubs and tour promoters in the pursuit of gigs.

If you ask for a reply, no matter how polite or well-worded you are, it makes you seem small-time.

If an agent/editor/publisher can't even send an automated response to your emailed query ("we just wanted to let you know that your message didn't end up in our junk mail bin! due to the large number of inquiries we receive, we can't answer each one personally, but... (etc)" then scr3w em.

Again, that's just me! But the typical attitude for a successful agent to take is "don't call us, we'll call you"--if you don't hear from them, then their answer to you is clear, or at least that's how they think about it a lot of the time. And an agent that's really eager to talk to you, but has no reputation and doesn't seem to have much of a clientele is somebody to approach cautiously.

You can always try a followup message after the initial query is sent, if you receive absolutely no reply, i.e., "Did you get my query letter sent on 4 July 1902?" I would wait for awhile before doing that, like a couple of months, if it was me, but then again I wouldn't send a followup at all if it seemed they were ignoring me. If I didn't hear back from them then I would keep writing, keep trying to get published, keep contacting other agents, and try sending them something again in a year or so.

Using an email handler that provides read confirmation can really help set your mind at ease, because then you don't have to bother anybody to find out if your email was opened. (There are a couple of subscription services that will even tell you if your email was opened and read versus marked as read!)

I hope this is helpful!