Authors or Agents? Picking the Shortest Queue

So Sarah Megibow at the online friendly Nelson Literary Agency was carefully explaining manuscript submission rules to a Denver writer's conference when someone asked, "are those rules the same for all agents/editors?"

GULP! No, they aren’t. I’ve been thinking about that question a lot this month. There are so many rules and regulations that writers must feel overwhelmed. I mean, Nelson Agency only accepts email queries (no paper mail whatsoever), but other agents only want snail mail. Some agents want query letters and yet others want a query pitch and a synopsis. Others will want you to include the first ten pages of the work. Then there are the editors. Some will read unsolicited submissions and others won’t even look at them unless submitted by an agent. It’s enough to make any writer’s head spin. So while I don’t have a submission rule that’s true for all agents or editors, I can give this suggestion: Do your research online before submitting. Tips From the Slushpile, November 2007 issue

And sometimes online research doesn't do the trick.

If you checked out the website of Harry Potter publisher Bloomsbury, the submission guidelines are clear:

Unfortunately, due to the enormous volume of material sent in to our Children's department, Bloomsbury can no longer accept unsolicited children's manuscripts.

But last week soft-spoken Emma Matthewson, Deputy Editorial Director of Bloomsbury Children's Books told a group of SCBWI authors that yes, submissions will be read.

Cause for celebration? Weeeell. Editors speaking at writer's events (and I can claim to have attended quite a few of these) very kindly always say they will look at your manuscript. My theory is that confronted with the fresh-from-the-garret faces of suffering writers, editors feel they just have to be nice.

And yes, they really do read the manuscripts. Now before you print off another copy of your 1700 page wizard fantasy, beware.

I asked Emma if agents had to wait as long as authors for their submissions to be looked at. She said, no, though agents had to wait a few weeks, they pretty much jumped the queue of direct author submissions. The authors submitting directly have to wait months. And the sad number of books from the slush pile that make it to publication (I think Emma said they published four in the past five years) just isn't funny.

So which queue — Editors or Agents?

At the end of the day, it's only time.

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Are you a facebooker? Join our group The Waiting Room - for all writers and illustrators who are waiting, waiting, waiting for that call from a publisher or agent. Published people are welcome to join and mock. But please no spitting.

This Blog Can Be Read by Junior High People

Here's a fun widget I found while procrastinating! So this blog apparently uses a junior high vocabulary. Neat!

I thought it would be fun to check out how my friends' blogs would rate.

Here's the wonderful fiction blog Wilf's World - told in the voice of an eight year old boy who would like to be Buzz Lightyear:

Here's Anita's blog on writing and getting published:

Here's Absolute Vanilla's witterings and warblings:

Hmm. All these college level vocabularies were giving me an inferiority complex so I inputted my role-model-author/blogger/all-around-genius-on-the-internet Scott Westerfeld's blog and this is what he got:

Which just goes to show ... you may be vocabularily challenged and still cool.

He Giveth Then He Taketh Away - Prince Sues HIs Fans

One moment he is staging 21 amazing nights of affordable concerts at London's O2Arena, giving away his CD to concertgoers and with copies of the Mail On Sunday.

The next he is threatening to sue his biggest fans for breach of copyright.

His lawyers have forced his three biggest internet fansites to remove all photographs, images, lyrics, album covers and anything linked to the artist's likeness. A legal letter asks the fansites to provide "substantive details of the means by which you propose to compensate our clients [Paisley Park Entertainment Group, NPG Records and AEG] for damages".

The cease and desist notice went as far as calling for fans to take down pictures of their Prince tatoos and Prince-inspired licence plates.

Now like anybody who was a young person in the eighties, Prince is part of the sountrack of my youth - but this just goes against the grain of the social web.

The new reality of the social web is giving artists and authors headaches galore across the world.

What is fair use? What is theft? Should an author's work be digitised forever and ever thus blurring the any boundaries in terms of rights?

Get this widget!

Fans on social sites play a massive role in the virus-like word-of-mouth relay of good books and music. In the field of YA fiction where readers are particularly skilled, fans produce videos, music, even countdown counters in honour of their favourite authors.

Here's a countdown widget (right) that a fan created for Scott Westerfeld's new book, Extras.

And here's a YouTube video in homage to The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.

Should authors and artists resist such flashes of inspiration in the name of copyright?

Or would it save time to just shoot one's self in the foot?