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 [...]

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If my site stats are any indication, Ms. Aragi and Ms. Cheney must receive a horrific quantity of queries. A huge percentage of my traffic comes from Google search results for those two agents.

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Oh, Ms. Barer, you break my heart…
Dear Author,
Please forgive this impersonal note regarding your query, which we have considered but must decline. As we receive a tremendous number of queries, we are unable to respond to each submission individually, but we thank you for the opportunity to review your work.
We encourage you to keep writing [...]

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Ms. Kathleen Anderson sent her response sometime while I was gone. It was waiting in the mailbox when I returned home.
To satisfy your curiosity, herewith the text:
August 28, 2006
Thomas Litchford
[Address Redacted]
Dear Thomas,
Thanks very much for sending us your query which I have now had the chance to read.
As interesting as your story is, I’m sorry [...]

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Someone in the comments section of the last post asked about the content of my rejection letters. Herewith Denise Shannon’s reply:
[Handwritten] Dear Thomas Litchford, [End Handwritten]
Thank you for your recent query to the Denise Shannon Literary Agency. Unfortunately, we do not feel your project is right for us, but we wish you the best of [...]

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I knew this day would come. It just took a little while longer than I initially thought, and there’s a good story about that if you read on.
Elyse Cheney, Carol Mann, and Denise Shannon all sent rejections, and I got them all on the same day. ‘Hmm, that’s odd,’ you might be thinking. Here’s why:
Yesterday [...]

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I’ve seen other bloggers write about the submission process, and I’ve even seen bloggers post copies of the rejection letters. It’s entertaining.
But one has to ask: is it wise to do so?
Miss Snark advises against it. Suppose I query an agent, and she Googles me and finds the blog (which just recently started to show [...]

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Well, since it was Thursday when I sent my submissions out, they should be arriving in New York sometime in the next couple days.
And that’s got me thinking about the dreaded slush pile. Just what is a slush pile? I’ve read a description of one system over at Miss Snark’s blog which can be found [...]

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Today I mailed five more submissions out: Kathleen Anderson, Julie Barer, Elyse Cheney, Carol Mann, and Denise Shannon.
That brings my total up to six, and so far all of the agents I’ve queried have been women. It’s interesting that so many women are agents and editors. Perhaps there’s a correlation with sales stats that indicate [...]

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Note: This is by far the most frequently trafficked post on my blog. For additional posts on my search for representation, click here. For those of you seeking more information on Ms. Aragi, click here.
Here’s the letter (e-mail) I sent Ms. Aragi:

Dear Ms. Aragi,
I am writing to query Lithium, a 75,000 word complete novel. [...]

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