Thursday, March 20, 2008


Major vent-fest going on over at Pub Rants. Amazingly, all this agent did was say she could no longer accept snail mail and was going to email submission. Responsible, no? Less paper, fewer dead trees laying around the office, easier over all for her and us. I applaud her.

However there were a lot of comments on the blog that objected her decision because it might be inconvenient to some writers. It was almost a brawl with people sniping at each other. (Usually the "anonymous" ones that snipe the worst! And they were sniping about that, too.)

Wait! I wasn't aware the agents owed us convenience. We need them, the gatekeepers to this world we're trying to break into, for their connections, networking skills and (I think) for protection. They do all the business/contract stuff so we can keep writing. So if we want to stand in the crowd screaming "Pick me! Pick me!" wouldn't it make sense to do it in a way that was easiest for them? Going against their guidelines might get us noticed but it wouldn't be in a good way.

Bottom line; READ THE SUBMISSION GUIDELINES.

Sheesh!

Okay, that's my vent for the day.

3 comments:

Erica Orloff said...

This is why I don't visit places like that. Nothing against her blog--I think it's a great service, But why do people feel the need to get so bent out of shape/nasty over something so trivial???

Josephine Damian said...

Wow, Aimless, I lef a comment earlier on PubRants blog about no more snail mail, but did not go back until now.

Lots of idiot trolls getting nasty over there. Jeesh.

I still say that email has a informal level of intimacy that snail mail doesn't (not to mention the spam block)- I see agents like Nathan (rightly) complain about queriers who write back after he rejects them, they try to start a whiny arguement - a dialogue - all which could be avoided by his using snail mail.

By all means, agents need to live in the 21rst Century, but I think email communication should only be between agents and established clients. I think it's very telling that Agent Jonathan Lyons switched to an online submission form as opposed to email - my guess more agents will adopt that format and get away from e-queries.

I just removed my email from my blog. Too many people I don't know at all were presuming a certain level of intimacy, and were contacting me out of the blue asking me to read their (really bad) work. Who has time for that? Not me.

Anyway, my money's on you to win the thriller contest.

Aimlesswriter said...

Josephine,
I made the mistake of clicking the "email followups" button on Pub Rants site when I posted early on. I never expected to have my email box flooded with all that nasty sniping! That poor agent! She makes a decision for her business and then gets slammed. Sheesh!
Anyway, thats for the vote of confidence over my Bookends entry. I can only hope.
:)

Last Day of NANOWRIMO --- Oh No!

 Where did the month go?  Certainly not on the page. I have an outline, some character sketches but mostly I have a lot of research notes.  ...