After four months of trying to find literary representation, my scorecard looks like this:
- 53 agents queried
- 5 requested partials or additional information
- 2 full manuscripts sent
- 35 rejections
Of the 18 agents who still have my query, I expect I will never hear from many of them: some are very clear in their guidelines that they only contact people whose work they want to see. So that “rejection” number is low, but I have no way to know how low.
I never knew there were so many agents, and of course I’m only contacting those who represent science fiction and fantasy — a very small subset of the whole literary field. I still have a long list of agents I haven’t queried yet, but I admit that I’m starting to get discouraged. But I keep hoping that one day an agent will like my near-future science fiction story of survival and sacrifice on the moon, even though science fiction is lagging behind fantasy these days, and like it enough to take into those publishers who don’t accept unagented manuscripts.
And until then … we keep knocking on the metaphorical door.
by 
A possibility, yes, but not my first choice. The old rule is “money flows toward the writer,” and self-publishing definitely doesn’t work that way. Not just because of the initial outlay of funds to do it right, but also (as you mentioned) in the marketing.
Any possibility to self-publish? Not sure how you would market it, but it’s a possibility.