Irene Goodman Literary Agency

Anaquana said:

People seem to be getting failure notices and spam email from them. Someone on querytracker said they got an email from her for a free steak dinner.

Man... I want a free steak dinner. Mmm... *licks lips*

And I hope you hear something from her as well.

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Thanks, Ana. That's bizarre. Haven't gotten any spam from them, but yes, a steak sounds good.

Anaquana said:

People seem to be getting failure notices and spam email from them. Someone on querytracker said they got an email from her for a free steak dinner.

Man... I want a free steak dinner. Mmm... *licks lips*

And I hope you hear something from her as well.

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I want a free steak dinner too... and I'll be in New York next week.

I got another failure notice. Should I try from a different email address?

I tried from a different email address and it didn't work.

Why don't they accept snailmail if their email address isn't working?

Roly said:

I tried from a different email address and it didn't work.

Why don't they accept snailmail if their email address isn't working?

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I first emailed them from my yahoo acct Feb 17, and then emailed them from another acct, March 11 just in case. I haven't received any failure notices, but I'm not exactly at ease with the idea that they actually got my emails (spam filter or god knows what else) after reading all the hellish frustration others have gone through with emails to IG agency.

Don't want to get myself in trouble....

Woot! Good work on snagging the agent

This is ridic...I still can't get through. I wonder if it blocks certain domains. I used gmail and hotmail

Roly said:

This is ridic...I still can't get through. I wonder if it blocks certain domains. I used gmail and hotmail

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hmmm, I used yahoo and then used DSL Extreme which is another version of gmail. I didn't get any bounced emails but I'm wondering if that's because my emails landed in their spam. I mean, why would you guys get bounced emails and not me, ya know?

Do you have Outlook? That way you can get a confirmation receipt that they opened your email.

Miriam Kriss is scheduled to be at the Pennwriter's Conference in Lancaster, PA this May if anyone is interested, so is Jenny Bent and Jennifer Jackson. Just thought I would pass on in case anyone was looking to pitch to them personally.

Somebody should ask her about the agency's email address maybe.

Sara Lou said:

Miriam Kriss is scheduled to be at the Pennwriter's Conference in Lancaster, PA this May if anyone is interested, so is Jenny Bent and Jennifer Jackson. Just thought I would pass on in case anyone was looking to pitch to them personally.

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Heard today that Miriam Kriss is out of this event due to a personal or family issue, replaced by Emmanuelle Alspaugh of the Judith Ehrlich Literary Management.

Interesting, I haven't heard back from her on a query I sent April 1st; I was going to see if I could do a follow-up in person. Oh well.

Hope her family is ok though.

Hillary, are you going to Pennwriters? Is anyone on this thread going? I know absolutely no one that is going to be there.

Does anyone know what Barbara Poelle's usual response time is on fulls? I just received revision requests and an almost-offer from another agent, but I'd really like to hold out and wait to hear what Ms. Poelle's verdict is.

I'm experiencing the same problem with bounces from the [email protected] edress.

Did anyone figure out a solution? I'm posting from a gmail account.

I'm repped by her and I'm not experiencing issues...although I do e-mail her direct address, still through that domain.

You know, I'm kinda glad I'm not the only one getting bounce-backs.

I queried Miriam Kriss' direct email address back in...probably early April or late March. Haven't heard anything back and that could be because of a) her family issues or b) she deletes any queries sent to that addy. My problem is, they must know by now their emails are bouncing back. Why not fix it? If they can't, why not give us the option to send in snail mail? Do they not WANT queries?

I just don't get it.

Roly, the Irene Goodman site is quite explicit - unsolicited queries sent directly to agents edresses are deleted automatically.

Downthrabbithole, do you know if there's a reason why the query address is bouncing? Is this their way of saying "we're swamped atm, try again in a few weeks?"

I emailed a direct address to let them know that some of us were having problems with the emails bouncing back and to ask if there was an option (snail mail) for those of us not getting through. Never heard back on that one, either, though.

The message I receive isn't a full box message. I get something about rules for bulk mail for gmail or something weird like that.

I thought my title might be doing it, so I took it out of the query and tried sending, but it still bounced back. Here's the message:

Technical details of permanent failure:
Message rejected. Please visit http://www.google.com/mail/help/bulk_mail.html to review our Bulk Email Senders Guidelines.

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I have no idea why it's doing this, but it's frustrating. This was one of my top picks, so I really wanted to send to them. I've tried sending it from a gmail account as well, but that didn't work either. I don't have another option short of a free email thing, as far as I know.

I get the same message, Kaitie. It's frustrating, but there are lots of agents to query in the meantime while the problem gets fixed (which we can only hope it will).

Channel the negative to positive.

I queried 4/22 to the queries@ address (from my gmail account) and all seemed fine. No bounce, no message...

You just got me interested enough to try something.

Didn't work. I'm fairly certain I'm getting hit by a spam blocker, but I can't figure out exactly what it is that's catching it. I've also tried to figure out what the chances are that they filter out certain things (this time I tried calling it a thriller instead of suspense because the website says "thriller" specifically), but that didn't work, either.

Someone PM me a phone number if you've got it. I'll shoot myself in the foot and actually call to ask for you guys.

Checking PM - did you try to send to either Irene Goodman at irene@ irenegoodman.com, or to Miriam Kriss at [email protected]? I know they prefer queries sent to the [email protected], but if those are bouncing back...maybe these other two addresses are worth a try, even with a brief explanation as to why the 'queries' address was circumvented, due to bounce-backs. Also, sometimes you can get a bounce-back if the recipient's inbox is full as well.

I sent an email to Irene Goodman and that worked, but they also state that they delete queries unread if they're sent there. I haven't tried sending my actual query to that address, though, so I'm not sure if it would bounce back or not. I actually want to query Barbara Poelle, and I don't have her direct email address in any case. I don't think my story qualifies as woman-lead, or however it was Ms. Goodman put it on the website.

I've gotten the full email bounce-backs for other agencies, but this one says the mail was rejected. Then again, it could be a different system. I've gotten this regularly since January, by the way.