{"id":444,"date":"2010-05-06T10:39:45","date_gmt":"2010-05-06T10:39:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress65\/?p=444"},"modified":"2010-05-06T10:39:45","modified_gmt":"2010-05-06T10:39:45","slug":"new-writers-pay-attention-sfwas-writer-beware-etc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/new-writers-pay-attention-sfwas-writer-beware-etc\/","title":{"rendered":"New Writers! Pay Attention to SFWA&#39;s Writer Beware, Etc.!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>(Warning: This will be something of a rant.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Yesterday I went through a handful of query letters submitted to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baen.com\/\">Baen<\/a>, several of which were from literary agents or people posing as agents. One of the agents is on the &#8220;Writer Beware&#8221; list maintained by the Science Fiction &#038; Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) &#8212; the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfwa.org\/for-authors\/writer-beware\/thumbs-down-agency\/\">&#8220;Thumbs Down Agency List&#8221;<\/a> &#8212; and two of the others are probably vying for their own spots on the list.<\/p>\n<p>Why don&#8217;t writers research these agencies before they submit to them? In addition to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfwa.org\/for-authors\/writer-beware\/\">Writer Beware<\/a>, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.absolutewrite.com\/forums\/index.php\">Absolute Write Water Cooler<\/a> forum has lengthy threads warning of substandard agents, including all of the agents in question, and <a href=\"http:\/\/pred-ed.com\/pubagent.htm\">Preditors &#038; Editors<\/a> has very clear and succinct evaluations, and lists all three agencies as &#8220;not recommended.&#8221; (Okay, it actually lists one of them as &#8220;highly not recommended.&#8221;)<\/p>\n<p>Why didn&#8217;t you pay attention, new writer?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Did you think the agency&#8217;s efficiency would impress us, if they sent three different queries in the same envelope? Especially if the query for your story told us next to nothing about the story?<\/li>\n<li>Did you think the agency&#8217;s attention to detail would inspire us, if they didn&#8217;t proofread their letter?<\/li>\n<li>Did you think the agency&#8217;s approach would intrigue us, if they didn&#8217;t include YOUR OWN NAME in the letter?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\nThat last one is not a joke: one of the agencies used the first line of the query letter to plug themselves (really) and went on to include the title of the book, a brief description of the book, and an offer to send the manuscript, all WITHOUT MENTIONING THE AUTHOR&#8217;S NAME. (I&#8217;ll admit, that was one way to get the query letter read more than once: I had to make sure I wasn&#8217;t just missing it somewhere.)<\/p>\n<p>So, bottom line: if you&#8217;re reading this blog post on a computer, rather than a friend having printed it out for you, then you have access to all of the sites I mentioned above. Use them. Take their recommendations to heart.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and you might want to check out potential publishers&#8217; sites, too. They have these things called &#8220;guidelines&#8221; that you might want to read. <\/p>\n<p>For instance, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baen.com\/FAQS.htm#Manuscript Submission Guidelines\">Baen guidelines<\/a> clearly state that we want to see a full manuscript and a synopsis, not just a query letter. Yes, I look at your query letters, but when I do I ask myself: did this person not read our guidelines, or did they read and ignore our guidelines?<\/p>\n<p>As for me, I will wait until something I&#8217;ve written is attractive enough that a good agent wants to represent me, because after three years of reading submissions I&#8217;m convinced that a bad agent is far worse than no agent at all.<\/p>\n<p>Do you have any related stories to tell? 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\/><\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(Warning: This will be something of a rant.) Yesterday I went through a handful of query letters submitted to Baen, several of which were from literary agents or people posing as agents. One of the agents is on the &#8220;Writer Beware&#8221; list maintained by the Science Fiction &#038; Fantasy Writers \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/new-writers-pay-attention-sfwas-writer-beware-etc\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[64],"class_list":["post-444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-agent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}