ThomasLitchford

I’ve been combing the submissions guidelines on several agents’ pages, and I have some questions.

1. Who’s to blame?

a. Agents who don’t really like writers?

b. Clueless writers?

c. The Man?

Perhaps I should explain. Many agents’ pages begin with a volley of statements designed to deflate authors’ expectations: “We receive a tremendous amount of queries”; “______ is an intentionally small agency”; “Due to the deluge of spam, we no longer accept e-mail queries.” Some go on to say they cannot respond to all queries. The overall tone is offputting, even antagonistic.

This makes me wonder how open the agency will be when reading my query. Additionally, some (most?) agencies employ assistants who read/screen submissions, a job described eloquently by The Rejector.

I am an assistant at a literary agency. I am the first line of defense for my boss. On average, I reject 95% of the letters immediately and put the other 5% in the “maybe” pile.

Am I wrong to be frightened by this? Does The Rejector hate writers? The answer, apparently, is…sometimes:

Today we got an unrequested full manuscript. This happens from time to time–usually the author tries to make it seem in the query like it was requested by being vague. (We hate that) Today the manuscript was an especially long piece of historical fiction, something like 150K.

To be continued…