Faye Bender Literary Agency

anyone else waiting on a partial?
it's 25 days today and i think i'll give
her the email nudge of rejection death
on the four week mark. =X

I wonder if her reading has been slowed down because of all the drama with her client, Peggy Seltzer. She might have been dealing with that, and therefore not been able to read her partials as fast as before. Just a thought... Maybe wait till the month mark to give the e-mail nudge?

maui, i had no idea faye was her agent. yikes!
perhaps i'll wait longer than 4 weeks to nudge. =X
thanks for the tip!

Maui Author said:

I wonder if her reading has been slowed down because of all the drama with her client, Peggy Seltzer. She might have been dealing with that, and therefore not been able to read her partials as fast as before. Just a thought... Maybe wait till the month mark to give the e-mail nudge?

Click to expand...

If anyone wants the full story of that scandal, it is summarized here.

Does the scandal make anyone rethink querying her?

gettingby said:

Does the scandal make anyone rethink querying her?

Click to expand...

I was planning to query her. The scandal doesn't change my mind about querying.
This reminds me of something IceCreamExpress mentioned in another thread. The book Famous All Over was reputed to be the first "important" Chicano novel about East LA written by someone named Danny Santiago.
Danny Santiago was a pseudonym for Andover and Yale-educated Danny James. James was a WASP from a privileged background, but both he and his wife had experience as social workers with LA's underprivileged Latino community.

i would query her. she didn't do anything
wrong in her capacity as an agent. from what
i read, the author went to extensive extents
to support her lies. her editor was fooled as well.

the main thing to know is that the book had
good reviews and buzz--so it was a good book that
faye repped. too bad the author was a liar.

and she requested my partial.
when i withdrew it because i got representation,
she was nothing but gracious and kind.

In case anyone is still interested... Faye's my agent, and here are my dos pesos.

She's smart, highly professional and a lovely person. She sold my first non-fiction book to a major publisher.

She's also a new mom, and I'd suspect she's out-of-pocket through New Year's or so.

gettingby said:

Does the scandal make anyone rethink querying her?

Click to expand...

Yes, it does. I am seeking representation for my memoir. Given what has happened, I would expect publishers to be very, very cautious about acquiring memoirs from this agent. I have no reason to believe that Ms. Bender is anything other than a competent agent and a lovely person. Nevertheless, perception and bad history count for a lot, fair or unfair. I submit that publishers these days are going to be even more risk averse than usual in this time of economic uncertainty.

Blueridge-

All due respect, but you don't understand how the major publishing business operates.

The agents, editors and publishers know each other quite well, especially in NYC. There's not one person in the circles that matter that will fault Faye for repping a work that all parties thought legit.

She has sold many books since that whole debacle went down and will continue to do so, mainly to major publishers.

Good luck with your memoir, in any event. Unless you're a known 'name,' it'll be a tough sale. By 'sale' I mean a significant advance from a major house.

Anybody have any recent experience with Faye Bender? I understood that she had fast response times, but I'm going on 30 days with an e query. Just wondering if I should put her on my follow-up list.

alias octavia said:

Anybody have any recent experience with Faye Bender? I understood that she had fast response times, but I'm going on 30 days with an e query. Just wondering if I should put her on my follow-up list.

Click to expand...

I'm wondering the same on this too. It's been over a couple of weeks for me. Just curious...

Yup, almost 3 weeks since my e-query...

Almost two months for me. I queried February 7th. I may wait a week or so and requery...only because she seems to be pretty lightining fast for others.

I queried on 1/5. No response. I guess I ought to send out a nudge email.

Has anyone tried nudging/re-querying? It's been six weeks since my e-query. I guess I'll take it as a no...

I sent my original query in January, waited two months and nudged/re-queried. That was almost two months ago and still no response. I've marked it down as a "no" and moved on. The guidelines on the website state:

"Please know that your submissions are very important to us, but that we have limited time to read them. We will be in touch as soon as we possibly can, and in that effort, please keep your letters to the point, include all relevant information, and have a bit of patience with us."

So, maybe I will get a response one day but I am not going to count on it. I don't mind the no response = no, I just wish it was a known element up front. For something like this I just don't know what to think. Maybe they were deluged in the query tsunami of 2009?

Yeah I agree. I don't mind the no response= No, if I know that for sure and when. I like the agent websites that say "If you don't hear from us in three weeks, consider it a no." I just add that to my spread sheet and at the 3 week mark type in "rejection by default."

Oh well...

Still no response from my January query and 3 month nudge. I'm chalking it up to a reject.

She rejected my MS on the same day that I e-queried...

I queried her on 23/07/09 and got a rejection the same day as well. Just the standard dear author rejection letter.

I queried this agent yesterday and received a failure notice - "mailbox temporarily over quota." I'll probably try again next week.

I queried last night and received a mailbox temporarily over quota notice just like the prior poster.

Are people still getting over-quota messages from her? Would rather not put hours of research into her if my email is going to get bounced.

I queried her early last week and it went through just fine. I'd suggest not querying over a weekend when the mailbox is most likely to be full.