I seem to have won the war on comment spam. Huge thanks to everyone who offered suggestions! I went ahead and upgraded my Wordpress, and then installed the Askinet plugin which has managed to catch about 99% of the spam. I do still have the screening feature in place that will only let previously approved commenters to comment, but if your comment doesn’t show up in a couple of days–at most–it might have been caught by the filter, so drop me a line and tell me to look for it.
I’ve been reading various agent’s blogs, and I am absolutely blown away that each and every one of them has stories of receiving angry and nasty responses to rejections. Okay, I know that there is a ridiculously large segment of the population that is frickin’ moronic, but one would hope that anyone capable of writing a novel (even a bad one) would realize that yelling at someone is not a way to get them to want you as a client. All I can figure is that these idjits are trying to make themselves feel better.
But it makes me wonder what they would do to customers in the stores who decided to not purchase their book. Would they hunt them down and yell at them?
If either of my two loyal readers are interested and/or involved in writing and publishing, be sure to check out the website for J.A. Konrath, author of the Lt. Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels mysteries. He has dozens of articles and blog posts about the business and craft of writing, but more importantly, IMO, are his articles about self-promotion. The harsh truth is that in this day and age of publishing, it is absolutely necessary for authors to do the majority of their own promotional work for their books. Not everyone might have the time and means to do the level of self-promotion that Konrath did for his books, however, he has a lot of really terrific ideas and advice about just how to promote your work. Also, if you like mysteries/thrillers, his books are fun, gripping reads and worth picking up.
There’s only one thing that I really disagree with him on. When speaking of agent queries, Konrath states that one should NOT include a SASE, because, he says, Why make it easier for the agent to reject you? (i.e. he concludes that if an agent is on the fence, then the existence of a SASE could possibly tip the decision over to rejection since the means to send a reject is right there.)
Okay, yeah, I’m not a published novelist yet. But this seems like a really poor argument. Yes, it’s true that in today’s world there are few if any agents who will use that SASE to ask for more materials or to ask to represent you. However, through my research into the submission requirements of various agents, I have seen, many times, agents who state that if there is no SASE included in the submission that said submission is discarded unread. So, basically, you’re weighing the “chance” that an uncertain agent would use the mere existence of a SASE as reason enough to mail a rejection against the much more real chance that an agent would not even bother to read your submission because the SASE wasn’t there. Just seems to me that the latter scenario is the more likely one, and one that I would not want to risk.
I have to agree with you re including SASEs! I have heard the same thing–if there isn’t one, the submission will sometimes be discarded without a read.
I also think it’s just a matter of professional courtesy–and therefore comes over as a mark of professionalism to include one. In addition, I don’t think it’s often a matter of “sitting on the fence” with agents or editors. Nor do I think many of them figure “oh, they didn’t include an SASE–I guess I’ll accept them, in that case”.
In the kind of tight market conditions that exist at the moment, an agent or editor has got to LOVE the book to be able to sell it–either to agents, or, at their editorial meeting, to their bosses and peers (each of whom will have their own title to champion and defend). The lack of an SASE isn’t going to make someone, whose income is on the line, love someone’s submission.
And there are still some agents who use the SASEs to request a complete manuscript–it happened to be a few months ago!
BTW, I just read your WOTF short story and loved it! Congratulations on a marvellous piece of writing, and I’ll keep my eye out for your progress in selling your novel.
2007
Susan Deefholts