Sunday, May 27, 2007

Where Is Everybody?

Granted, it's the start of summer, the long weekend that opens the season of beaches, vacations and white apparel. Chances are, the literary agent you're waiting on is opening his or her cottage in the Hamptons this weekend, and has no intention of reading your query letter.

And then? It's Book Expo America time once again. This year, the exhibition is being held in New York City, so you'd think the agents would be dropping in at the office from time to time. And there's more than one of them who works out of their flat, so they're dropping in the office every single night. But no. This is party time. Meet and greet. Sidle over, make a contact, make a deal, get a name out there.

If you want to get an idea as to what is going on, keeping your dream agent from perusing the query letter you spent months polishing, you can always go the BEA website. There will be authors signing, publishers selling, librarians wandering in little herds like so many lost sheep, and the literary agents are just too busy buying drinks to have time for agenting. They've got plenty of clients already, and this week they will be spending their time promoting all the birds in the hand.

In another week, they can consider your bird in the bush. Might as well get the snail mail query in the mail and have it waiting for them.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Just found your site while do a little search for "grand gesture". Have you written any actual books? I see you writing about book signings and such... Well, maybe I should just investigate more when I have more time.

O hAnnrachainn said...

I have indeed written books. The problem is, I can't get a literary agent to represent one of them. Hence, I'm not published.

If you want to learn about the madness that is the publishing industry, read away.