Agents-- Rude, uncaring bastards!

The BBQ Pit
1

I don’t mind the rejections. It is my philosophy that my manuscript cannot be rejected if it hasn’t been read. Very few agents have actually read my manuscript.

I don’t mind the form rejection letters. Literary agents are busy people who get tons of mail. No one should expect a personal answer. When I do receive a personal answer I get all warm and happy inside.

I don’t mind the long response time. The publishing industry moves at a snails pace. The way I calculate it: take the amount of time stated and multiply that by 1.5. This is the minimum amount of time anything takes in this industry.

But when an agent asks for my manuscript, gives me a time-line, then completely ignores me for 15 months, well that just crisps my ass-hairs!

She told me to expect an answer in 4 months. After 6 months I sent her a stamped postcard with little check off boxes. She didn’t even have to write anything, just check off the box and put it in the mail. No response.
Two months after the postcard I send her a letter. No response.
10 months after I sent her the ms I leave a message on her machine. I give up after I receive no response to this. 15 months later I get my ms back with demands for revision. Not suggestions, but demands. I have to change the heroine’s age and redo the setting if I want to work with her!

I suppose I should be flattered. This particular agent had just brokered a very big deal with a well known author (not in my genre. I read about it in Publisher’s Weekly). Of course she had no time to be polite to the likes of me! I should consider myself lucky she deigned to communicate with me at all. Twisting in the wind is not a very comfortable position to be in.

She pissed me off even more than the agent who requested sample chapters. His rejection was not a form letter. No- he rubber-stamped the first page of my sample chapter:
NOT FOR ME
This man is a literary agent, doesn’t he know -or care- about the trouble and expense people go through to make up those packets?

Literary agents are chock full of author horror stories. I pride myself in acting like a professional. Is it too much to ask for the same in return?

2

I have met a few literary agents, and I have heard other authors’ stories about a great many more. Unfortunately, the probability distribution seems to be clear:

Nice but not competent.
Pricks but they will make you money.

The one thing that does seem universal (even for authors making 6 figure + advances) is that agents NEVER meet their own schedules.

I was lucky in my own experiences. The times I required an agent, my collaborators already had established ties and wished to use them. All I had to do was say hello and deliver my pages.

I remain eternally grateful since it appeared to me that closer contact might have inexorably sucked all joy from my life.

3

Ike and I have had this discussion, too–I think agents are Satan’s Spokesmodels, but he begs to differ. I don’t use 'em at all, and I still get published!

My first book was sold by an agent–a very good one, till he went senile and had to retire. My second agent sent my second book out to the “A list” publishers, then dropped dead of a heart attack. No one would touch the book after that, so I had to sell it on my own.

Then an agent called me up and said “let’s do lunch!” He asked me what I was working on, and when I told him and said, “do you think there’s any interest in this subject?” he rolled his eyes and groaned, “ohhh . . . that means I’m gonna have to make some PHONE CALLS . . .”

Since then, I send my proposals directly to the appropriate acquisitions editor at publisher’s. Only a handful of publishers say “we only accept proposals through agents,” and I say screw 'em, then. Why should I pay someone 15-20% of my take for doing what I have to wind up doing anyway?

4

I did send to publishing houses directly, but that was before I knew what I was doing. Maybe I should try that again.

The houses that stand behind there genre fiction all want agented writers. I can’t say I blame them. I’ve been in many reading and critique groups. I see some of the stuff that has been submitted to the publishing houses. I just hope that I am not as self-delusional as these people are when it comes to my writing.