[Agency] Curtis Brown Group Ltd. (UK) / Curtis Brown Creative

Hey, you guys, look who finally joined the 21st century! Online submissions, yeeeessss! <3

The form is okay to use, only problems I've noticed are 'tab' doesn't work to navigate between fields and the 'Profession' section is very limited (can't find IT). The resizable boxes also don't seem to resize on IE7, Firefox or Opera. And I really hate being unable to control the formatting of my sample chapters.

EMaree said:

Hey, you guys, look who finally joined the 21st century! Online submissions, yeeeessss! <3

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Thanks for posting this I'm not ready to submit yet, but checked the form out anyway.

the 'Profession' section is very limited (can't find IT).

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Agreed -- I can't find anything that would match me either! Looks like it's an optional field anyway, so I'd rather leave it blank than choose something that's not quite right.

The resizable boxes also don't seem to resize on IE7, Firefox or Opera.

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Works fine for me with Firefox 15.0.1 but not IE 9. If you can see a little triangle of dots in the lower right corner, hover over it and you'll get a resize cursor (I don't get this with IE 9).

I'm surprised they don't have a box for word count -- obviously people can state it in the cover letter but I'm sure it would be helpful to them to see at a glance where a word count is an obvious red flag.

Oh hey, TudorRose, you're spot on about Firefox 15.0.1.

I must have been running an older version when it wasn't working for me before (I know it was a Firefox Portable install, but can't remember when I last updated it...)

Only downside is the form mucks up all my formatting!

Has anyone heard anything back from them since the online form went live? They stated a 6-8 week wait, just wondering how accurate that is?

Nothing heard back yet for me. I imagine 6 - 8 weeks will be accurate, they must be flooded with submissions just now.

(They also just had their 'Discovery Day' event which might increase submissions.)

Coming up for 8 weeks (3 days to go) and heard nowt. I sent it to the New Writing Team. Anybody heard anything?

8 week wait and an R.

shaldna said:

Has anyone heard anything back from them since the online form went live? They stated a 6-8 week wait, just wondering how accurate that is?

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50 days from my submission to rejection (today). So seems like they're keeping to their timeline, at least for now.

Queried Katherine Fausset last night, got a nicely worded rejection this morning.

Sorry for not responding sooner, got sidetracked by revisions.

I submitted September 22nd, got a full request from Stephanie on Oct 24 (and a request for info on any other stories I had up my sleeves). I had to decline as by that point I'd just agreed to accept representation from another agency.

I subbed to CB in Jan and got my rejection through at the end of Feb.

Today, I received a Curtis Brown Creative "newsletter" (read "advertisement for their courses etc"). I've just been over the CB submissions pages and I can't see anything which says you sign up for a newsletter when you submit and I can't remember ticking any box like that (although it is possible I did)- I keep a separate email for my subs and that's the only thing it's used for.

So, colour me deeply unimpressed.

Same thing happened to me, Theo. If you click "unsubscribe" at the bottom of their email it'll take you to a page where you can choose from a drop-down menu to tell them why you're unsubscribing. I believe one of the options was "This email is spam."

I wasn't excited to see this on their "Submissions" page:

We're one of the few agencies who are happy to read work by new writers.

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Unlike all those other agencies that just represent the same authors over and over. You'd never see an agency like Christopher Little take a chance on a new author...wait.

whirlaway said:

Same thing happened to me, Theo. If you click "unsubscribe" at the bottom of their email it'll take you to a page where you can choose from a drop-down menu to tell them why you're unsubscribing. I believe one of the options was "This email is spam."

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Yes, I saw that. I'm more concerned with their possible violation of the data protection act. They have retained my data without informing me, they have used it to direct market me. They give no information on the website, that I can see, about this, about how they use the data, or about how securely it's stored.

If a new epub was spamming submitters with marketing stuff, there would be condemnation. Being a AAA agency does not make it okay.

As a practical exercise it isn't that big of a deal, but as a principle it's important and submitters should be aware they are doing this.

Theo81 said:

Yes, I saw that. I'm more concerned with their possible violation of the data protection act. They have retained my data without informing me, they have used it to direct market me. They give no information on the website, that I can see, about this, about how they use the data, or about how securely it's stored.

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If anyone feels strongly enough about this here is how you complain: http://www.ico.org.uk/complaints

Yeah, I wasn't impressed by this either. Lots of agencies fretting about the future I guess. No excuse though.

Submitted: 9/6/13
Lovely, personalised rejection from Stephanie Thwaites: 15/8/13. (This one wasn't quite for her, but she was keen to see anything in future.)

I didn't get the newsletter, so maybe they've fixed that now?

I'm pretty sure I've unsubscribed to their "newsletter" a couple of times now. I keep getting it.

It puts me off the idea of submitting anything to them.

I've been received that newsletter as well. I'd been wondering where that spam came from, actually, so now it makes sense.

Subbed to them day before yesterday. Not at all confident. I'll see what happens.

Project Deadlight said:

Only downside is the form mucks up all my formatting!

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That is not a small thing, either.

I've definitely unsubscribed yet keep getting their "newsletter". It definitely puts them in the do-not-submit-to-these-geezers basket.

Yeah, I've been through the official unsubscribe page a few times now and I still get them...

Earlier today, I sent them a polite email asking them to manually remove me from their list and suggested that maybe there's some flaw in their unsubscribe here system.

I've just received a prompt and courteous reply from the gent's assistant, a lady who wasn't aware of the newsletters. She's requested a copy forwarded so that she can find out who's sending them and have me deleted from their list of recipients.