Thursday, October 22, 2009

BookEnds' Jessica gets it exactly right

I'm a devoted follower of the BookEnds LLC blog and you should be too.

The posts I read there are often times exactly what I'm thinking, only polished up, polite, and not accompanied by screeching.

Here's the latest in that category

This is the paragraph that really sums it up best:

Think of it this way: Wouldn’t my job, my life, be a lot easier if I simply submitted manuscripts exactly as they were when I originally received them from an author? If instead of asking for revisions again and again, reading the manuscript or proposal multiple times, and sending out revision letters, I just left it up to the editor? Wouldn’t it be easier for me to submit without crafting the query/cover letter I need to include to send to the editor? I spend hours on revisions, hours on the letter and even more hours following up with editors. Wouldn’t it be easier for me if I didn’t do any of that?



Like Jessica, I'm getting a lot of "I can't really write a good query so here are my pages" type emails. Frankly, it makes my job easier to get them. I just say no.

5 comments:

Susan Bonifant said...

A lazy attitude speaks louder than (no) words. If you're rejecting queries like that, you're probably also rejecting first drafts because those require work as well.

Wilhem Spihntingle said...

The query letter isn't my problem and I totally understand the reasoning behind it. What really gets under my skin, is the fact that many agents require the obligatory ass kissing, and ego stroking, BEFORE you can get into the premise of your novel. God bless you Janet for not requiring this type of thing!

Anonymous said...

I posted over on her blog about it, but my sentiments are the same: perhaps writers should spend as much time and effort as they do complaining about the query process and actually work on writing a stellar query.

I understand their frustration, but with an "I can't" attitude, how in the world will they even come close to succeeding in this business?

Kristin Laughtin said...

Love the last line. From a writer's perspective, a certain nasty part of me says to let other writers submit that way. It'll make my query letters look better by comparison when the time comes.

Jemi Fraser said...

I'm another avid reader of both this blog and Jessica's blog. I would assume the reader of the letter to Jessica isn't :)