THE GUILTY READER

Spent this morning going through my email queries—some good, some poor, some just not my thing. No matter how many “no thank you’s” I send, I can’t get over the guilty feelings. I know how much work, blood and tears most authors put into their work. I give their queries a minute or two, then make a decision. Most authors I never hear from again, some send me a kind little thank you note.

But last week we received a two-page, hand-written note from a very indignant rejectoid. (Jon often hand-writes his rejection notes on queries that have been mailed, thinking it’s more personal than a boiler-plate rejection note.)

This lady was pissed! How dare we write all over her query? Why did we simply say “No”? Why don’t we go into more detail about why we are rejecting? Why were we so rude?

Whew! That one goes in the “Authors We’re Glad We Don’t Represent” file, right along with the guy who wrote a book, complete with photos, about the adventures of a blow-up doll…eeeww!

Back to the guilt feelings. I guess I’ll never get over feeling bad that I have to turn down so many good efforts. It’s even worse when we request chapters that just don’t live up to the query’s promise. And today, we had to reject 6 manuscripts that we foolishly requested when we were young and optimistic.