OK, this is just a rant, but I am really annoyed at Ms. Amsterdam. I read on Agent Query that she is interested in medical thriller/suspense, which is my genre, so I queried her following her guidelines: query + synopsis + first three chapters, and because my chapters are long, it came down to ~80 double spaced pages altogether. Got a form rejection ONE WEEK later, and where I live, one week is the minimum it takes for a letter to get to NY and come back. Ms. Amsterdam barely glimpsed at my query (and BTW, it's not a bad query since it prompted four agents so far to request a partial and/or full) and tossed the rest in *I HOPE* the recycling bin. No, it's not the rejection that got me all revved up, it's the waste of paper! If she knows she's not going to look at it, why doesn't she just say QUERY FIRST like most agents do?
From now on I'm going to deal only with paper-friendly agencies...
Again, sorry for the rant.
I'm going to play devil's advocate here and say why on earth does receiving a response in a week mean she didn't read it? Now, chances are she probably didn't, or at least not the whole thing (they often know within a few pages--or even paragraphs--whether or not something is for them), but to make an assumption like this is a bit premature.
It is entirely possible that she received it, opened it immediately, and read the entire thing. You said that you included eighty pages. It doesn't take that long to read eighty pages. I could do it all in an hour and a half, two max. She could have opened it up, read every word of it, and then decided it didn't work and sent back the rejection.
It's impossible to tell without having been in her office whether or not she actually sat down and read all of it, even if the
likelihood is that she didn't.
I'm just saying this because this response sounds (to my ears, so please be forgiving) more like an author upset over being rejected and making accusations than the sort of complaint other authors should be warned about. You probably don't mean it that way, but that's just how it comes off to me. It sounds as though you are emotional and upset, and that's cool, I understand, but there's a reason that I mentioned it.
This is the internet, and it's a public forum. Anyone can read this--including said agent or other agents. It is entirely possible that if she were to see this she would know exactly who said this (especially if she took the time to read the eighty pages and remembers an author in New Mexico with an 80 page sample). And if you read the link in Slushkiller, you can see that a lot of times responses like this put the author in a negative light.
I'm not trying to be rude, so please don't take it that way. I'm just trying to say if you're upset, that's fine, but take a step back, vent to a friend, and wait until the emotion side of it passes. Then, if you want to write a complaint about, "I wish she would request smaller samples," (which is a perfectly valid thought, don't get me wrong), you're more able to do it in an objective way.
I really hope I'm not seen as stepping on anyone's toes here. I just think it doesn't serve any of us to be seen getting into a bitch session. I'm sure you're a really nice person and we all want to vent about things like this, just be aware that a public forum might not be the best place for it.
Sorry about the rejection, though. It really does suck, especially after spending that much on ink and paper and postage.