Friday, January 07, 2011

Ways To Ruin A Good Submission

For several years, Stephen Barr has been an assistant at Writer's House, helping Dan Lazar and learning the agenting game.

He's now a new agent, looking for just about anything from YA to commercial fiction and mysteries.

Easy enough to fire off a query to sbarr at writershouse dot com.

I polished up a query letter, spell-checked it and everything.

Then I managed to hit send before remembering to paste the first five pages of the novel into the body of the query letter.

So many ways to ruin a good submission. Those who don't follow directions are usually the first to be rejected, no matter how good the story might be.

How's he going to know if the opening pages are enough to drag a reader in if they're not there?

Brilliant. Now I'll have to sit in the weeds and wait for the next new agent to come along.

1 comment:

Peg Leg O'Sullivan said...

Nine hours from botched submission to form rejection.

It not only pays to read the directions, but it's a good idea to not get so excited about a new query opportunity that you forget to follow what you just finished reading.

Onward and upward. I found four other literary agents to query and I promise to slow down on the next round of queries.