I’ve been effectively cold-calling agents and agencies in terms of literary submissions in addition to exploring self-publishing, and I’m hitting a bit of a snag. It’s not that I’m getting rejected at the manuscript stage, it’s that I’m getting radio silence at the query letter.

One concern I have is that my manuscript may come across as "more of the same" or literary white noise if you haven’t taken the time to read it, which would speak to an issue with the query letter, not necessarily the work.

The obvious answer would be to rework the query letter to at least spark interest, but if the issue is with the content of the work, would it be more prudent to try to hype the work and change some facets of it to make it more - for lack of a better word - gimmicky? I don’t want to make concessions on the story I want to tell in order to have some snazzy call-out on the book jacket.

My instinct is to stick to my guns while working on changes to the query letter, but I wanted to see what some other thoughts were about what happens when your work doesn’t inherently jump out.