If you're thinking of submitting a query to some literary agent of your choosing, you might want to refrain. Perhaps you haven't taken a good look at a calendar. This weekend is extra long and heavy with significance. It is...the end of the summer.
Publishers have traditionally not worked on summer Fridays, as if the world has not changed significantly in the last hundred years. A gentleman's business, you see, and gentlemen like to head off for their summer cottages as early as possible, which makes it imperative that work hours be curtailed on Friday afternoons.
Because their contacts at the publishing houses are out of their offices on Fridays, literary agents tend to follow the example and they don't work much on Fridays either.
With the end of summer coming, many literary agents take their holidays and close up for a week or two to welcome the return of the autumn season. Chances are, that agent you are so convinced is ideal for your manuscript is not even in the office this week. When they return after the holiday, their inbox will be filled to overflowing. In modern e-mail terms, that means you might get an error message from the Mailer-Daemon that the inbox is full. So you've wasted your time in querying.
A full inbox is not pleasant, and as your ideal literary agent dives into the sea of queries on that first post-holiday day of work, said agent becomes annoyed. Patience wears thin, as query after dreadful query passes by their eyes. You don't want your perfect query to be read under that kind of circumstance, do you?
Of course not.
So instead of querying agents who aren't in and who will not look favorably on your query when they return to work next week, sit down and read a good book. Or four. Newcastlewest Books has a fine collection that could keep you entertained while you wait for the end of summer hours. And downloading takes no time at all.
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