Looking for Suggestions: Creating an app for agents to receive submission

andreafuyu · Sep 19, 2018

Hi, I’m thinking about creating a mobile app similar to IPR License and Pubmatch for small press and agents to receive the submissions and search the titles. I prepared the questionnaire. I'm looking forward to hearing suggestions, especially from small press and literary agent.

1, I understand email is still the mostly used way to submit the query letter and manuscript. How can I find the contact info of yours?
2, As you are receiving tons of query letters every day, what make you open particular ones? What is a successful query letter like which can make you want to get in deeper touch with the author? How do you make the final decision to buy the right to one book? What are other difficulties while processing the submissions?
3, Besides receiving the email, what are other ways you would receive the submission?
4, Will you search particular titles online/offline while you already receive plenty of email submissions? If so, how will you search titles online/offline?

cornflake · Sep 19, 2018

andreafuyu said:
Hi, I’m thinking about creating a mobile app similar to IPR License and Pubmatch for small press and agents to receive the submissions and search the titles. I prepared the questionnaire. I'm looking forward to hearing suggestions, especially from small press and literary agent.

1, I understand email is still the mostly used way to submit the query letter and manuscript. How can I find the contact info of yours?
2, As you are receiving tons of query letters every day, what make you open particular ones? What is a successful query letter like which can make you want to get in deeper touch with the author? How do you make the final decision to buy the right to one book? What are other difficulties while processing the submissions?
3, Besides receiving the email, what are other ways you would receive the submission?
4, Will you search particular titles online/offline while you already receive plenty of email submissions? If so, how will you search titles online/offline?

I don't understand your premise, I'm sorry. You want a separate app for people to send queries that agents can also go on and search through? Why would they do that? They get more than enough queries taking up time as it is. They're not going to go looking for more -- to search by titlle? That doesn't even make sense; they don't know any titles.

No one is going to look further than your first question. Everyone who decides to query can find that info -- as well as the answers to 2 and 3. This is like doing an interview with George Clooney and asking, "so, have you acted in many movies?'

AW Admin · Sep 19, 2018

andreafuyu

You're reinventing the wheel, and you're making it square. This isn't something agents want.

Old Hack · Sep 19, 2018

I've seen several attempts at this over the years and they've all failed, because agents and editors don't want to use display sites, apps, or anything else. They just want to get submissions as they do now.

Sorry, OP, but I don't think there's a need for this.

zegota · Oct 31, 2018

Worth noting that several agents already use QueryManager for this sort of thing as well. If you *really* think you can offer something above and beyond that, you might consider asking agents who use QM about its shortcomings, what sort of functionality they wish it had. But honestly, the query process is fairly simple; there's very little need to search queries, and given how few manuscripts most agents request, sorting those is not really a big issue.

But hey, best of luck!

cool pop · Nov 3, 2018

An app??? It was 2015 before some agents/editors stopped demanding snail mail submissions. :ROFL:

Looking for Suggestions: Creating an app for agents to receive submission

andreafuyu

cornflake

practical experience, FTW

AW Admin

Old Hack

Such a nasty woman

zegota

Fantastic!

cool pop

It's Cool, Miss Pop if You're Nasty