AgentSavant.com

Come visit Laurie McLean's blog, agentsavant.com, and check out her musing on the life of a literary agent. She tries to fill it with 75 percent helpful information and 25 percent personal ramblings. She'd love to have you stop by!

www.agentsavant.com

Here's an example of a recent entry:

Before you Assume...

Two things happened this morning to prompt this blog entry. First, all the emails I sent to hotmail accounts yesterday were returned as delivery failures with the same message: The mail server IP connecting to Windows Live Hotmail server has exceeded the rate limit allowed on this connection. Now I sent these emails at various points throughout the day, so I think Microsoft's Hotmail division was just having a gruesome day. Also, I received a tirade from a hotmail patron who was livid because I had not replied to his query from two weeks ago. I love emailed submissions because with one mouse click I can sort by email address and find an answer, rather than bemoan the fact that I recycle all paper submissions once I've made a decision and can no longer know for certain if that reply letter went out or not. Sure enough, I had two emails regarding this writer--one was his submission, the second was a "delivery failure" message from the hotmail uber-server. Thus this blog entry.

There are many reasons you might not get a reply from an agent. Sure, there are some agents who just don't reply unless they want to see more of something. But they are few and far between. Most agents spend an inordinate amount of time reading and considering every single submission they receive. I know I do. I spend hours a day doing this activity hoping to find a diamond in the rough. Usually I do this at night or very early in the morning. What used to be personal time. But I have too much client work to do during the day to perform what we agents call "new client acquisition" research between 9 and 5. Perhaps the post office lost the rejection letter. It HAS happened. Or an email reply landed in your spam folder. You know. The one you never check but just hit "empty" without reading?

I don't want to belabor a point, especially since the flame emails I get are rare. I merely want to remind everyone to take a deep breath before you berate an agent on Absolute Write Water Cooler. Or send that hate email that gets read in front of hundreds at that agent's next query letter panel. We're all on this space ship together. And you know what happens when you assume...