Pretty good day for a Saturday. I spent the morning with my friend Carol tread milling and steaming at the gym. When I got home I checked my inbox and discovered a FLAMING email from an angry author. I rejected his science fiction query and he was royally outraged that I did so.
Angry Author (AA) told me I wouldn't know talent if I stepped on it. Actually, he said "You wouldn't now talent if it PAID YOU to publish." Huh?
AA said I didn't know what my agency needed. Then he listed all his books, just to make me sorry I'd passed. To quote AA again: "Here's what you miss forom actulayy working with a literate professional." What's that you say? Literate. Well, AA did spell literate correctly.
All of this information was dispensed in nasty, angry verbiage, which is this author's right. But, it's actulayy very stupid. AA and I will never work together, but agents do talk and they do blog. We don't enjoy rejecting your queries and we usually have good reasons for the rejections. Responding as AA did demonstrates that he really hasn't a clue about how this business works.
Jon and I are very fortunate because we seldom get responses like this. In fact, we seldom get any response from authors whose queries we've rejected. And that's just fine. Once in awhile, an author thanks us for our time which is very thoughtful.
So, Angry Author, I hope it made you feel better to get it off your chest. And I want to thank you for giving me a good blog topic!
3 days ago
2 comments:
I never cease to be amazed at the things people will do and say. There truly are some characters in this world--they don't just exist in novels!
That's astonishing.
I'm less astonished that I would have been before reading similar anecdotes on other agents' blogs. But it's still astonishing.
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