a number of queries

How many times is too many times to query an agent about the same project?

If you’re doing it via email, of course, there’s always the possibility that it got lost in the ether of the internet, fell into a spam filter by mistake, or was accidently deleted by the miss-slip of a finger. Should you send it again just to be sure?

There’s one author who has now sent me the same email about the same project at least 50 times in the last six months. No, I’m not exaggerating. If anything I’m probably under estimating. I’ve gotten so proficient at deleting them, that I’ve probably forgotten how many. Some weeks I get his email two or three times a day. I dutifully responded to the first four or five – treating them all as though they were new queries. Next, I deleted a few with no response. Then I asked the author not to send the query any more. But the emails keep coming.

Someone suggested maybe the author has the query on some kind of auto-send and doesn’t realize the same query is going out to the same group of agents every time. But what author would do something like that?

I put his email on my list of addresses to block and still he manages to get through. Perhaps he really is just one of those cyber-stalkers. No spammer has ever been this relentless. Maybe I should be worried.

If he hasn’t gotten the message yet, I’m really not interested in his project (no matter how wonderful it might be) and harassing me with emails is not going to change my mind. Once would have been enough.