Gawker Unsolicited: Spell my Damn Name Right, and Other Hot Tips for Agents.
Somebody give me a machete. I can’t get through all the layers of irony here.
November 25th, 2008
Gawker Unsolicited: Spell my Damn Name Right, and Other Hot Tips for Agents.
Somebody give me a machete. I can’t get through all the layers of irony here.
November 25th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Holy crap. Are they kidding with this? You know, every day I stumble upon something that confirms the path I’m on. I thought I would be all angsty like “Oh God, I’m messing up my chances at a writing career if this goes bad.” But holy crap, what writing career? Look at this mess.
To make sure I understand the state of things, it’s as follows: To land a NY publisher, you have to have an agent. But the better agents don’t accept unsolicited submissions or queries either. Most of them aren’t accepting new clients.
So, you need either a new or a not great agent. With a newer agent, at least they don’t necessarily suck, but they may or may not have the connections you actually need. With an agent that isn’t as good, they’re no better really than if you’d submitted directly to the publisher yourself. And in some cases the cover letter, etc. might have been worse than what you did.
This is the part where I pause and laugh about the “quality control system.”
This is just, damn, there is Kool aid involved here, there has to be. I do know people who have agents and publishers, and I think that rocks, but for those of us without that, it’s a kool aid drinking experience.
I’m completely not concerned with getting an agent or publisher. I’m concerned with getting readers. If I can do that on a big enough scale, then I will merit the wider distribution a large NY pub can give me.
If I can’t, then I can’t, but I don’t think a NY pub would have made a difference in that case.
And small publishers that take unsolicited work, most of them operate under such tight budgets that they can’t promote me either. With a smaller press the author really is doing ALL their promo. I’m not doing all that for the publisher to reap the profits and me to reap a small royalty.
Screw that crap. That’s what you do when the entry barriers (i.e. monetary cost to publish anything) are too high. That’s not true anymore.
I’m so glad I got off this hamster wheel before I got too far on it.
November 25th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
This isn’t just agents… it’s magazines, newspapers, everything you see in print. The text generation, the 20-something editors, just aren’t as careful, and there is such a huge demand for content…
Oh, and I didn’t really want to edit, but I like the timed edit thing so much that here I am… editing.
November 25th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
.
Maybe that’s what agents need — a timer.