[WR] A look at your chances

Agent Kristin Nelson has a post up on PubRants giving her "year in statistics."

Heading up the list:

20,800 (Estimated number of queries read and responded to in 2006)

54 (Number of full manuscripts requested and read)

8 (Number of new clients taken on this year)

21 (Number of books sold this year—not counting subsidiary rights stuff)

6 (Number of projects currently under submission)

The numbers are daunting, aren't they? But when the nights are long and the wind is howling 'round your door and your spirits are low, remember, the fine words of Wendy Chatley Green:

The odds are against you, but they are less against you if you actually write and submit something.

Or, as Miss Snark says, it doesn't really matter what the acceptance/rejection rate is for a given agent or publisher when you're submitting your work. What matters is your work. She signed a client who had had eighty-one rejection letters before she signed him. It only takes one agent to say yes, Miss Snark reminds us.