The hardest problem

Let’s just say that you’ve been writing for a while. You’re serious. You’ve taken a course or two. You’ve probably had at least one manuscript assessment, and maybe more than one.
What’s more, you’ve got your stuff out to literary agents. Not timidly, but properly. You approached at least 10-12 agents, and you chose those dozen with some care. You wrote a decent query letter. You polished the first chunk of your manuscript until you could see your face in it.
And?
Agents liked it. You got some full manuscript requests. Yay – You went crazy and drank half a glass of white wine before eight o’clock. (You devil!)
Then –
Some agents just never got back to you, even though they’d asked for the whole damn manuscript and even though you carefully nudged some 6-8 weeks later.
And a couple of agents maybe did get back to you, with what could be described as positive, but not really positive feedback. You heard things like this: “I loved the concept and your writing, but didn’t feel quite engaged enough to want to offer representation. Another agent may feel differently.”
And look. At this point, we need to say, WELL DONE. Most writers don’t get to even this point. You only get as far as this if your work has some serious credibility. Agents are a very, very tough bunch and if you’ve almost persuaded them, you’ve already done very well indeed.
But you don’t want praise. You want to get published.
So what are you meant to do now?
Spend MORE money? Another course, another manuscript assessment?
If you’d done little or none of that already, you would be nuts not to make the necessary investment at this point. (If agents are flirting with you before you’ve had professional feedback on your work, they’ll be dancing with you once you have.)
But suppose you’ve done all that. Partly, you just don’t want to spend more money, but also you feel (probably rightly) that another spin on that merry-go-round won’t alter the final outcome.
So what, realistically, are your options?
This is a hard question and I don’t have an easy answer. But here are some of your choices:

1. Spend more money
If you’ve already done one or more courses and had one or more manuscript assessments, then personally I wouldn’t recommend this route. You buy a manuscript assessment because you want to move the needle on quality.
For me, one manuscript assessment is, almost always, an excellent investment. Assuming you are even vaguely rational about using advice, your skills will develop and your manuscript will improve. The same can often be said for a second assessment of the same book.
But a third assessment? A fourth? I don’t think so. For me, that’s an investment too far. (For most authors, most of the time. There are always exceptions. A clear exception would be if the feedback from agents gives you a clear editorial pathway to follow.)

2. Approach more agents
Well, maybe.
Personally, I think that for a standard novel – something mainstream and in principle easy to place – you shouldn’t need to go to more than a dozen agents. If you try a sensibly chosen dozen and they say no, then you should only persist if you have strong evidence that you only missed by a whisker. (Let’s say two or three agents were effusive, but passed on the manuscript because it was too similar to things they already had, for example.)
For me, the idea of just banging on 40 or 50 doors doesn’t seem right. Not fair to the agents, and not really a sensible strategy for you either. Agents are easier to persuade than publishers, so if it’s that hard to get an agent, is it really likely that you’ll end up with a publishing deal? The answer is no.

3. Make direct approaches to digital-first publishers
I like this idea, especially if your book is the right sort.
Agents and publishers never tell you this, but increasingly the traditional industry is looking at a book to see if it’s more of an ebook or more of a print book.
The more mass market / genre-based a book is, the more likely it is to sell well via ebook and not necessarily so well in print. The kind of books I’m talking about? Horror. Many thrillers. Lots of crime novels. Most SF, especially space opera. Urban fantasy. Romance and the less literary end of women’s fiction. All those genres (and more) sell largely as e-books. That’s not territory that the Big 5 have ever done well in. Some of the areas on that list (hello, space opera, or volume romance) are more than 80% self-pub or digital-first.
The trad industry still puts out this idea that ebooks have peaked at a relatively low 20% share of all books. And that’s true – if you’re only talking about the traditional industry. But there’s a whole world beyond trad.
There is a host of digital-first publishers, there’s all of self-publishing. Those things combined are far larger than even Penguin Random House. It’s a whole continent that the regular books-media simply ignores.
In short, you need to think where your book most happily lives. Perhaps your manuscript just doesn’t feel print-booky – perhaps it’s not something you’d find on the front tables at Barnes & Noble or Waterstones. That’s not a good/bad judgement. It’s just a judgement about where your manuscript is most likely to sell. If the answer is “predominantly on Amazon”, traditional publishing is not likely to be your answer. Digital-first publishing is an excellent answer. So is self-publishing (so long as you do it properly.)
If your best route to market is self-pub or digital-first, you are best advised to skip agents altogether. The reason you’re getting that “almost but not quite” message from agents is that they like the book (ie: you can write) but they can’t see it as a Big 5 book. In which case, don’t pursue that route. Don’t spend more time or energy chasing it.
Just submit direct to some digital-first outfits. Or self-publish.
That way lies joy – and control – and maybe sales.

4. Question your elevator pitch / write another book
Why should anyone in the world read your book? What’s the one sentence that makes a potential reader exclaim, “Ooh, sounds interesting, tell me more”?
That’s such a central question and you have to have an answer.
If your basic pitch isn’t strong enough, your book won’t get picked up by agents. It won’t get picked up by the industry. Even if you skip all that by self-publishing, your book will still struggle to sell because you can’t put a compelling reason to buy in front of your target reader.
And (sorry) but it’s common for good writers to write a competent first book that lacks a powerful elevator pitch. And that’s OK.
In effect, your first manuscript is, it turns out, a learning project. It’s where you learn the tools of the trade, the processes, the tempo. If you write a competent first project that interests agents, but fizzles out for want of sufficient commercial grab, please throw it away.
Come up with an idea that blows your brain – then deliver that idea, using all the craft you’ve acquired along the way.
That’s not failure. That’s a really intelligent way to navigate towards success. I can’t even count the number of people who have got their second or third novel published in this way. Many of them were utterly passionate about their first novel, their baby. They were disconsolate when it wasn’t picked up. They questioned their dream of authorship.
And then, when the right book was eventually published, they admitted that the first one just hadn’t been ready and never would have been, no matter how many manuscript assessments had been thrown at it.
***
I like #3 and #4 as options on this list. I like #1 and #2 the least. But every book and every author is different.

If you have this problem, then figure out the solution that works best for you. And GOOD LUCK!