This is a very stupid derail but...third person present tense? I didn't know people actually used that outside of fanfics.
I've read loads of books written in third person, present tense. You can use whatever POV you like in your books. Whether they'll be published or not depends only on how well you've written it, not on whether you've used the correct POV or not.
I that really OK to paste in pieces of correspondence? Maybe edit the post and turn those quoted bits into paraphrasing?
Did you report the post so that the room mods were alerted to your concerns? That would have been more useful than commenting in-thread.
I submitted my novel WB to Paula Munier at Talcott Notch, and to be honest, I found her flakey.
We swapped about a dozen emails—this is the first one I got from her after she'd finished the book:
[snipped]
Pretty good, right?
Indeed. She's giving you strong feedback. You should be pleased. I see no evidence of flakiness so far.
But then she got hung up on the POV issue—which I found weird.
She told you she had a problem with the POV you'd used in your book, and then I assume told you again, and instead of recognising this as valuable feedback and acting on it you decided it was "weird".
(FYI, stylistically, the book is third-person present-tense, free indirect.) No other agent I've been in contact with (which has been a lot) ever once mentioned this multiple-POV issue to me—none cared.
Did any of them give you any feedback on your book? Did any of them tell you they loved your book, as Ms Munier did?
The number of POV's in an MS doesn't matter, so long as there's flow to the material.
That can be the case. But Ms Munier highlighted an issue that she saw with your book, and made it clear that if you wanted her to represent you you'd have to address that issue.
But not according to Paula Munier. That kind of mechanistic appraisal of material I found off-putting. But I consciously swallowed it. After all, I needed an agent.
So what I did was, I didn't even mention the multiple-POV issue and focussed instead on issue 2, the character stuff—which I agreed with her, and offered multiple solutions to the problem. You know: Trying to show her that I'd play ball, editorially speaking. the easiest way to do that is to pick your fights: Focus on the stuff you agree with—and really go to town on that stuff—while ignoring the stuff that you don't agree with. This is classic team-building stuff, and I did this successfully.
Ms Munier didn't want you to build a team with her, she wanted you to produce a book she thought she could sell. And while you might have made some of the changes she requested, if you didn't address the POV issue she highlighted then you were making it impossible for her to take your book any further.
It sounds as though you didn't even acknowledge the POV issue but if you did, was it to argue with her that the "number of POV's in an MS doesn't matter, so long as there's flow to the material"? Because if a writer did that with me, I'd assume they were going to be difficult to work with and I'd withdraw from the submission.
But I also made a mistake.
There's a saying that every agent knows they want to rep a book when, as they are reading it, they can imagine an editor who would like it and offer to buy it. So I asked Paula that key question: "Which editors do you think would respond to this material?"—and then I made a mistake: I listed some dream editors I would like to work with on this book. Big editors who straddle the line between commercial and literary.
I don't think the mistake you made was to ask her which editors she would send this book to. The mistake you made was in not addressing the advice she gave you with regard to POV.
So I sent off this very positive, good-vibey email—but then I didn't hear from her in a week. Finally, I emailed her "???", literally: Just a quick thing.
She replied:
[snipped]
That was her reply in total.
That seems like a reasonable response from her.
She told you her concerns about your use of POV. You refused to address those issues. It's clear the two of you do not share the same vision of the book, so therefore it would be impossible for her to represent you in a way you'd be happy with. Move on.
I was pretty surprised, so I emailed her words to the effect that I'm practically a prostitute, I'm so commercially minded.
To this, she replied:
[snipped]
The last time I ever heard from her. I answered her by asking to give me more details on how to fix this problem. Never heard from her.
So she told you once again that she'd love to represent your book, but as you are not willing to budge on the POV issue, and she doesn't think she can sell it as it is, there is no point trying.
Why should she respond to you again? She's already told you why she can't represent you, and she's told you that more than once. At this point, you're wasting her time.
I think the editors I named—big names, who've shepherded big books—scared her off. Notice the line "far bigger agents than I", which she uses to justify her POV hang-up: Kinda telling, isn't it.
She doesn't have a "POV hang-up". She's being perfectly professional.
It wasn't your suggestion of big-name editors which scared her off. It was your unwillingness to work on the POV issues she sees in your book. A writer who objects to editorial advice is impossible to work with: if the writer is objecting to tightening up his POV issues before he's even offered representation, before he has a deal on the table, then he's going to be a nightmare to get through the process of structural editing.
Also—and this I cannot emphasize enough—my failure not to actually speak to her over the phone was a big mistake. It made our relationship much more tenuous, based solely on email. Email is great in order to keep a record, but lousy in communicating the human element, and building a bond with an agent. I should have called her. Don't actually remember why I didn't.
Please don't phone agents unless you're invited to.
Not speaking to her was not a mistake. What lost you the interest of this agent was your own behaviour, not the lack of bonding between you.
Anyway, that was my experience with Paula Munier. Hope it helps.
At the start of this comment you said you considered Ms Munier "flakey".
I see no evidence of flake here. Not from her.
You made several mistakes in your communications with her, when all she did was tell you how good she thought your book was, and what she thought you should improve on it before she could offer you representation.
I know it's hard, this writing lark. I know it's depressing, getting rejections left, right and centre; I know it's difficult when you're told the book you thought was perfect needs a lot of work doing to it to get it up to publishable standard. I know all that. But instead of getting offended and trying to blame people and calling them names, just move on.
