Recent email from a writer "I'd like to update you on my project!" followed by all sorts of news that if I was actually interested in the project might be useful.
Of course, I'd passed on the project some weeks back, so this email was not only useless it was annoying.
When you are querying agents there is absolutely NO circumstance, up to and including your death, for which you will email every agent on your submission list.
Send All is the tool of the devil and is designed to consign your email to a fiery pit, and if I had my way, you'd be following.
The problem of course is that this blog doesn't reach the miscreants who do this. I know this for an ironclad fact because the queriers who are paying attention are the ones I talk to during the Chum Bucket experiment and every last one of them does it right. Even if some of it's wrong, it's never this wrong.
But just in case some errant new querier sees this, here's how querying works:
1. You send a query
2. I respond
2a If I ask to see pages you send them
2b If I decline to see more, that's IT
No replies to 2b. Not even thank you, although that doesn't annoy me quite as much as other replies do.
Any questions?
8 comments:
This is sad, even though it's also funny.
But it's sad in the same way a PTA meeting is sad, because the parents who show up are the ones who know the rules and raise their kids properly, while the ones who should be there, the ones who need to be "talked" to, aren't.
Kudos to Mariam above for an awesome analogy. = )
Here it is, folks, a perfect summary of proper query etiquette. No need to reply to a query rejection; it just means that the Shark's not the one for you. It's nothing personal (unless in her rejection she contends your ms. would be better suited as Satan's toilet paper--but we know she would never say such a thing.) Move on, gracefully and silently, and find the right agent for your work.
If I change the spelling of the title, then it's alright, right?
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Cheers!
Who's Julie????
What if I have changed the genre of my book to 'young adult' AND added some vampires to it? I bet every agent on the list would want to know that right away, wouldn't they?
I've sent thank yous to agents after personal rejections. I didn't know this was a no-no. Oops.
Dotti, it's not. Don't worry. I'm just cantankerous cause I have 167 emails in my mailbox right now.
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