Dear OAbby: What Does "I Just Don't Love It Enough" Mean?

Dear OAbby,

I had a full manuscript request from my dream agent, but she just rejected it, saying she "just didn't love it enough".  I want to keep querying, but before I do, I want to try and fix the book before I get other full requests.  But I'm not sure what the first agent meant by "I just don't love it enough", so I'm not sure how I can fix my manuscript.

Can you help?

Sincerely,

Confused

Dear Confused,

There really isn't anything you can do to fix the manuscript when this is the only comment made in a rejection.  Agents and publishers are human, and just as subjective as anyone else.

"I just don't love it enough" means there is nothing glaringly wrong with your book, just that the agent or publisher doesn't feel passionate enough about it to want to read and re-read the manuscript over and over as you go through rounds of revisions.

They may also not feel passionately enough about it to fight tooth and nail for it on submission to publishers.  It takes a lot of work to get a book to the right editor and for that editor to push it through to acceptance.  Whoever is doing that pushing needs to really love and believe in a project to be able to successfully do that work.

So the best thing you can do in this scenario is to keep querying.  The next agent or publisher who requests a full might be the one who falls head over heels in love with your book and will be willing to go to the ends of the earth to see it published.

Good luck!

X OAbby

If you have a question you would like OAbby to answer, please email OperationAwesome6 (at) gmail (dot) com with OAbby in the subject line.