Responding to rejections

Thanks for the apology.

Gordo

When I get a a form rejection on a partial or full I always give the old "thanks for your time," bit, but I usually also say something along the lines of "If you have the time, do you have any feedback on this submission?" If they do, great, if they don't respond, no harm no foul.

on the bright side Gordo, there's a handful of agents who hang out here. At this rate you won't have to worry about querying them at all, as you're coming off as somewhat impossible.

When you're pulled over by a cop, you don't say "sup, bitch?" even if that's what you'd say to your friends.

When you go to an interview, you dress like a candidate who wants the job--even if you know the exec you meet will be wearing Tony Hawk jeans.

Where did the "fight the power" come from now? This isn't the first time you've been expected to adhere to a certain standard, I'd assume....and in the past, you either did or accepted the consequences. Here, the consequences are very simple: If you are already going to put on a show like this, what can someone expect when they suggest revisions?

I'm not an agent, but dealing with that? No fucking way. Not here, not in imagination land as an agent, not when I'm interviewing folks. That's just life. Folks told you why the "rules" apply here, and I don't think you are really unable to grasp them. So either accept and move on, or decide you want out of the game....but the game is what it is. You play or don't. and if you don't, you're usually better off abstaining quietly rather than seeing if you can piss in your own pool on the way out.

Quicklime:

Quicklime:

I believe that if my writing is good enough, literary agents will represent me irrespective of whether they think I'm "impossible." In fact, if their position were similar to yours, essentially our way or the highway, I wouldn't want them to represent me at all.

It's really quite simple. How I choose to relate to literary agents (or policemen or job interviewers) is my concern only. I have indeed lived with the consequences, (without sacrificing my principles) and I have been quite pleased with the outcomes.

Finally, with regard to suggestions for revisions, if I think they are going to make my book better, I make the changes. If I don't, I take my business elsewhere.

Respectfully,

Gordo

gordo said:

Quicklime:

I believe that if my writing is good enough, literary agents will represent me irrespective of whether they think I'm "impossible." In fact, if their position were similar to yours, essentially our way or the highway, I wouldn't want them to represent me at all.

It's really quite simple. How I choose to relate to literary agents (or policemen or job interviewers) is my concern only. I have indeed lived with the consequences, (without sacrificing my principles) and I have been quite pleased with the outcomes.

Finally, with regard to suggestions for revisions, if I think they are going to make my book better, I make the changes. If I don't, I take my business elsewhere.

Respectfully,

Gordo

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how you conduct yourself is your concern, yes, but you raised it in a public forum.

Agents have plenty of talented people submitting, but talent is worthless without enough humility to be able to accept changes and enough general non-dickishness to be the sort of work partner that doesn't drive them into the bottom of a bottle of scotch. Talent only takes you so far, publishing is still a business. If you can't be a businessperson, you'll fail.

gordo said:

Strange isn't it that we authors are always advised that we must never begin a query letter with "Dear agent." Yet some of us are apparently willing to excuse form letter responses from agents beginning with "Dear author" because "anything else takes too much time." What makes their time so much more valuable than mine?

I've noticed that some agencies, faced with a large number of queries, choose to close submissions until they catch up. If they don't have the time to address me by name, or address me at all, that's what all of them should do. Either that, or hire more staff.

It may be, too, that the reason some agents are so curt and even rude is that so many authors are unwilling to speak up for fear they will be labelled "unprofessional"
as I have been. Some might even suggest they are "A--holes.

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It may also be that you don't have a clue about agents, publishing, writers, or professional conduct. This post of yours is so far off any rational basis that it's hard to take anything you say seriously.

Trust me on this, when you make a post saying such things, you've removed all doubt that an agent's time is infinitely more valuable than yours. Getting a "Dear author" means the agent was too polite use the actual words in her mind.

Your principles do not seem to include looking up facts about agents, about publishing, about history, and about being a jerk. Word does get around, and if you'll make posts like this on a public forum, you'll do the same silly things with other professional agents and editors.

What you said is not funny, is not professional, and, worse, is neither clever nor original. It's childish, unprofessional, and says far more about you as a person than it does about any agent or editor. No one wants to work with a diva, and you have DIVA tattooed all over you.

Maryn:

These are your words directed to me: "...how you choose to relate to individuals here can and often does have immediate and direct consequences. You're not new here, so surely you know that our one rule is to Respect Your Fellow Writer (RYFW)."

Please tell me what "immediate and direct consequences" you're referring to. Are you, in fact, issuing a threat? You might also tell me exactly what I have done to be disrespectful to a fellow writer?

I will grant you that my approach to responding to literary agents who, in my opinion, are rude is different from most of the good people here. So what? As long as I am willing to bear the consequences (as I have already stated) and I don't interfere with the development of anyone else's career, why should you or anyone else care?

Please note, too, that it has been suggested on this thread that I am an A--hole. I must wonder, in your role as moderator, why you didn't you see fit to remind that person about respecting his fellow writers?

Respectfully,

Gordo

Maryn:

These are your words directed to me: "...how you choose to relate to individuals here can and often does have immediate and direct consequences. You're not new here, so surely you know that our one rule is to Respect Your Fellow Writer (RYFW)."

Please tell me what "immediate and direct consequences" you're referring to. Are you, in fact, issuing a threat? You might also tell me exactly what I have done to be disrespectful to a fellow writer?

I will grant you that my approach to responding to literary agents who, in my opinion, are rude is different from most of the good people here. So what? As long as I am willing to bear the consequences (as I have already stated) and I don't interfere with the development of anyone else's career, why should you or anyone else care?

Please note, too, that it has been suggested on this thread that I am an A--hole. I must wonder, in your role as moderator, why you didn't you see fit to remind that person about respecting his fellow writers?

Respectfully,

Gordo

Good info here guys. I just had my first rejection and was pretty thrilled with it actually, as I got the editor of a big name pub to send me an email I'm targeting consumer magazines/newspapers.

It was a brief 'no thanks, we'll pass' type email.

How do I continue with this going forward? Should I leverage the existing email thread to pitch the next idea in the future? In this case it went to one inbox and came out another (so one person must have passed it along to her, so now I may have a more direct contact). Should I continue with the email address on their editorial guidelines or submit direct to her?

Rennet said:

How do I continue with this going forward? Should I leverage the existing email thread to pitch the next idea in the future? In this case it went to one inbox and came out another (so one person must have passed it along to her, so now I may have a more direct contact). Should I continue with the email address on their editorial guidelines or submit direct to her?

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"No thanks" seems pretty form to me, so I'd go with existing guidelines.

Really, unless asked to do otherwise, that seems the safest bet. (Esp. as a lot of publications have entire systems set up around the guidelines, so bypassing them can cause administrative problems.)

Rennet:

Unless the editor said that she's interested in seeing your next work, and to send it straight to her, don't go direct. What you pasted sounds like a standard form R, which means continuing to follow the publication's submission guidelines. But I applaud your excellent attitude about the rejection! They can be tough, but having a positive outlook definitely helps.

Cool, thanks. I guess the excitement comes from the fact that a previous query was simply ignored, so I figure I must have passed some type of barrier with the most recent one.

She also visited my personal page, which frankly exposes me as a rookie. A lot more can be read into that than should be but by comparing it to my last query.. if this one got the editor to visit my profile page I think it's better odds than not the idea was not complete crap Improving my profile page seems like the next step. In addition I will wait to query again when I have a few more clips. This is actually a pretty big one so it is now in my list of targets for "reach" publications.

Sounds dumb to strategize over a simple form email but it's all I've got

n/m

To Mr. JamesARitchie: resident curmudgeon

Wow! I must have hit a nerve. Why else would you call me irrational, a jerk, clueless, childish, unprofessional, and a diva? That's a lotta name calling pal (along with A..hole) that I get on a board that instructs its members to respect their fellow writiers. Feel free to differ with my opinions and methods, but save your distasteful adjectives for someone else.

Also, in my opinion, getting a "Dear Author" rejection from an agent is not polite for any reason. Quite simply, it means they don't have the time to respond as other business people do, and they do it, in large part, because folks like you let them.

Third, you speculate about my past methods of relating to editors and agents. Of course, you have no way at all of knowing anything about that since you don't know either me or my editors. Perhaps I have indeed been silly; however, whatever methods I have used has resulted in a nice list of publications (fiction, nonfiction and poetry). Who is it that doesn't have a clue, I wonder?

Finally, you go ahead and relate to publishers, editors and agents however you see fit. Clearly, how I choose to do the same is not your concern. My career, right??

Gordo

I thanked the agent who requested a partial on twitter after she rejected me. She thanked me for showing her my work, and that was that. But I was already following her on Twitter, so yeah. I think that's different than sending an entire email for it.

gordo said:

To Mr. JamesARitchie: resident curmudgeon

Wow! I must have hit a nerve. Why else would you call me irrational, a jerk, clueless, childish, unprofessional, and a diva?

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Oh, come on! JAR says that about everyone.

I've only responded a couple of times to rejections and each time was for an agent who went out of their way to critique aspects of the manuscript. I thanked them for the comments and in one case, I clarified the situation since she admitted the main reason she was rejecting was a nitpick. It didn't help, but she did reply to thank me for clarifying.

I got a personalized rejection where the agent went above and beyond in commenting on my story. I sent them a thank you. I think I would send any agent a thank you who took the time to give personalized feedback.

I've never replied to a rejection to a query; they're all form rejections, so there's exactly zero point.

I have replied with a quick "thank you" to all the full ms or partial ms rejections I've received. I did this whether they gave substantive comments or not (most actually did). They took the time to look, so it's only polite.

On a recent rejection of a full ms, I DID reply with more than a "thanks": I asked if the agent would consider a revision. Now, this might not work out in the end (she may reject the revision when I send it to her), and I DEFINITELY don't recommend it in most situations. In this case, because she had said some very positive things, because she'd gone from query to partial ms to full ms, because she pointed out specific things that were not working from her, and because I felt I could address those things, I thought there might be room for revision. I was still very nervous about asking, because I didn't want her to think I was being pushy. I figured I had little to lose, though, and she could always ignore me. But she said she'd look at a revision, so I'm working on that as we speak.

gordo said:

To Mr. JamesARitchie: resident curmudgeon

Wow! I must have hit a nerve. Why else would you call me irrational, a jerk, clueless, childish, unprofessional, and a diva? That's a lotta name calling pal (along with A..hole) that I get on a board that instructs its members to respect their fellow writiers. Feel free to differ with my opinions and methods, but save your distasteful adjectives for someone else.

Also, in my opinion, getting a "Dear Author" rejection from an agent is not polite for any reason. Quite simply, it means they don't have the time to respond as other business people do, and they do it, in large part, because folks like you let them.

Third, you speculate about my past methods of relating to editors and agents. Of course, you have no way at all of knowing anything about that since you don't know either me or my editors. Perhaps I have indeed been silly; however, whatever methods I have used has resulted in a nice list of publications (fiction, nonfiction and poetry). Who is it that doesn't have a clue, I wonder?

Finally, you go ahead and relate to publishers, editors and agents however you see fit. Clearly, how I choose to do the same is not your concern. My career, right??

Gordo

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Attitude is everything and you better hope the future agents and editors you submit to don't read posts like these. Also, some of the people you are acting this way towards may be people you submit to in the future. Think about that next time.

On a side note, Jamesaritchie, aren't you an editor? What would you do if a writer, skilled or not, submitted to you and you read posts like this before you made a decision? What about after you made a decision? If you were going to accept him, would reading replies like the one I quoted change your mind?

Edit: I just realized how old most of these posts are, sorry! *lowers head in shame*

Look, I've said it before Arcadia, but apparently you didn't read it, so I'll repeat it. If an agent or editor likes my work enough to publish it, but changes his mind because he or she doesn't like my attitude, then I wouldn't want that person for an agent or editor.

If you care to be the type of person who would hide his true personality in order to gain favor from an agent or editor, then go ahead and do so. At least this author doesn't care to take that route.

Also, your response doesn't address my concern, which wasn't that Mr. Ritchie disagreed with my position but that he found it necessary to lapse into name calling to do so.

Finally, as I have also stated earlier, I'm quite satisfied with the results of my approach, and I wish you good luck in pursuing yours. My career, right??

gordo said:

Finally, as I have also stated earlier, I'm quite satisfied with the results of my approach, and I wish you good luck in pursuing yours. My career, right??

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That's nice. You'll be pursuing your career elsewhere.