I AM Therefore I Write: What Went Wrong

My friend, Ethel, has been telling me for years that I should write something about mistakes authors make when querying an agent. She’s one of the most editorially astute women I know who’s not earning her living in publishing, but I’ve been avoiding her suggestion because every time I identify myself as an agent I end up with more of the queries I’m trying to avoid. Now that I’m semi-retired and not taking on any new clients, I figure the timing is right. Instead of writing a list of to-dos, I’ll just tell you about some of the DON’T(S) I’ve received.

One of the strangest was about 700-900 pages. I only tried to read the first 30 or so pages, but that was more than enough! I still can’t tell you what genre it was, but every other page was a graphic rape scene. The author told me the character was going to find redemption eventually. I felt that the author and his character needed to seek and maintain counseling.

The chances of an editor buying a 700-900 page novel from an unknown are slim. Yes, we’ve all heard J.K Rowling’s (Harry Potter) rags-to-riches story, but the reason it’s a story is because it’s unusual. Things are different in European publishing. I’m not convinced that she would have had the same results had she been submitting to American publishers.

Recently I received a novel from a man who has an impressive resume in another field. His submission was single spaced and printed on both sides.

I think I understand why this happens. First of all, the author didn’t do his research. Google manuscript submission, formatting is explained all over the place. But I believe newcomers simply format their manuscripts to look like books. It’s hard to believe that somebody would spend months or years writing a novel and then not take the minutes needed to learn how to submit it, but it happens every day.

I’ve received manuscripts with almost no punctuation short of periods. When questioned about this I’ve been asked, “isn’t it the editor’s job to provide punctuation?”

I once had an editor who was fond of semicolons. She did change some of my commas to semicolons and, since this was happening after the sell of the manuscript, I didn’t care. But NO it is not the editor’s or agent’s job to make your book readable that’s job one for the author.

“This novel is a combination mystery, sci-fi, romance, historical, contemporary time-travel.”

After all this time, I’ve finally learned how to answer authors that don’t have a clear genre. “It sounds wonderful. Now tell me who the mystery, sci-fi, romance, historical, contemporary time-travel editors are and I’ll submit it right away! There can be some overlap and often is, but I can’t sell what I can’t describe. An editor that buys romance is not going to read a novel that isn’t mostly and clearly a romance. I had one tell me one time that she had enough of her own work to read without acquiring for other lists–and I understood wholeheartedly.

Stop everything, I’m the last client you’ll ever need. If you concentrate on just my work I’m going to make both of us very rich!

You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve heard variations of this and I’m still not even a little rich. In fact, this kind of author has proven time-and-time again to be barely adequate.

I have a friend, who’s a very successful agent, that says the minute she speaks with a potential client who wants to talk about negotiating her percentage, she’s finished with the conversation.

I don’t recall this happening to me but my friend says it’s a sure sign that the author doesn’t respect what the agent does. She said she did represent a few of them in the beginning and they were nothing but trouble.

Speaking of trouble, I’ve developed a 3 rule. If I get 3 calls or 3 emails from a potential client in a very short period of time (like within 2 days) I’m outta there.