Counting Up the Savings

Once WEbook went to a pay-per-use service, I gave it up. There's only so much money to go around, and I couldn't see the need to spend my hard-earned dollars on something that I could do myself for free.

What became of the submissions that went in before the deadline when the freebies expired?

All I can say is, thank heavens I didn't spend money on these submissions. It would have been money thrown away.

Jessica Salky at Russell & Volkening never opened the submission. Not once. And it arrived in her mailbox at the beginning of January.

If I'd downloaded all the necessary bits and pieces and then paid $9.95 for the service, I'd be pretty pissed off by now. Six months later, and no answer. The submission was never looked over, not the query letter, not the short synopsis, not the author bio.

Who else never looked at my request for consideration? Donna Bagdasarian, for one, but she's a new agent and she doesn't seem to be responding to anyone at all. Too bogged down trying to build up a business with what she brought along for the ride, I suppose, and not in a financial position to take on an unknown.

Regina Brooks of Serendipity Literary Agency has yet to open a submission that I sent in March. I take it that's a no, that lack of interest. Maybe when she said she was open to submissions she didn't mean just any submission but a submission from an established author who would guarantee an immediate pay day.

The same must go for John Talbot and Helen Breitwieser. Of course, Ms. Breitwieser doesn't accept e-mail queries, and how else is WEbook's submission going to work except via e-mail? Not handling modern technology well, apparently.

My final submission through WEbook went out to Amanda Cardinale in April. It's only been two months, so maybe there's an outside chance that she'll get around to opening it before Christmas.

So I saved myself almost $60 by not using a paid service that doesn't seem to work all the time.

For that kind of money, I could buy some high-quality booze and have a much better time than I would have if I'd bought six rounds of WEbook and come up empty-handed.