How do we, the unpublished writers, get the attention of publishers? Most of them suggest we get agents, and most agents suggest we get lost!
I thought I would try to get an inroad into one publishing house by being damned cheeky. Read more here
Login etc
Links we like
Resources
Rights for writers
VWC member links
- Anne Ellis (as JL Merrow)
- Dave Weaver
- Gillian Thornton
- Ian Cundell
- Jenny Barden
- John Spencer
- Jonathan Pinnock
- Julie Mayhew
- KJ Bennett
- Mandy Knight
- Mark Clementson
- Mark Lord
- Meena Wells
- Oscar Windsor-Smith
- Red Wave Communications
- Sandra Norval
- Space Captain Smith
- Steve Barley
- Susan K Franklin
- Tim Blinko
Reluctantly, I have to sympathise with agents – at least, those who do a
conscientious job. The London agent Luigi Bonomi of LBA, who is as conscientious as it gets, once told me that he receives around 10,000 submissions a year, from which he chooses just 5-6 new authors to represent.
For his own sanity’s sake, he has to reject a lot of authors on the first
paragraph of their covering letter. To entice him into the first paragraph of
the submission itself is, he says, a major authorial achievement.
But… I do take issue with those agents who don’t bother to send us a form
rejection slip until six months after submission, or even longer. Or who never reply at all, despite our enclosed saes. That is simply being unprofessional.
(No doubt, they also complain about those authors who, for their own sanity’s sake, make multiple agency submissions!)
Thank heavens that the era of the Agent as Little Czar is nearly over. Hasten the day, I say, when every author is a print-on-demand self-publisher!
Nigel Robinson aka John Yeoman