It’s not you, it’s them
Oh dear.
Every now and then I get an email which is just so annoyingly familiar I want to scream.
In this case, a wonderful human – one of you, a Jericho client – wins a literary prize. The prize is for unpublished manuscripts and the major element of the prize is a publishing deal with an up and coming new publisher.
We will call our wonderful human Jacaranda Cappucino, or Jax for short. In my imagination, Jax is a woman with abundant black hair and always dramatic headgear. Today, she is wearing a red fedora with a pair of pheasant feathers in midnight blue.
And …
I advised Jax to get an agent, but for various reasons, she didn’t – including the fact that the competition rules were restrictive, so there wouldn’t be much room for contract negotiation, so in theory not much need of an agent.
And …
The competition rules were displayed on a website, but after the winner was announced, the website was changed and the rules were no longer posted and Jax could not longer see the rules by which she was bound.
And …
By the time I spoke to Jax about agents, she had actually been introduced to some, one of whom turned her down rather cattily. (And, jeepers, turn someone down if you will, but why cattily? So she didn’t feel great about agents, and I get why.
And …
The book was published. Yay! Jax began work on the next. That next book needed a new contract. She pushed back on reversion rights and got language that she wanted in there. (Yay #2, and well done, Jax.) She also wanted the publisher to modify its language on optioning the next book. (So a lot of contracts mean that the publisher of your contracted book has a right of first refusal over the next book you write. That can be a venomous and destructive little clause, so you need to be careful with it.) The publisher would not modify its option language, but it was worth a go.
And …
Around this time, more agents were in touch with Jax. One agent talked to Jax and said, don’t worry about the option – if this publisher doesn’t take your next book, I can always place it elsewhere. They then apparently, and without consulting Jax first, rang the publisher and told them more or less the opposite.
And …
The book sold. It sold well. Or at least the publisher told Jax that they were ‘thrilled’ with sales. That was their word: thrilled. And thrilled is good, right? Except that after three months of working with Jax on Book #2, the publisher told her abruptly that they wouldn’t be publishing it after all. The publisher “struggled terribly to tell me this and preceded it by saying he wished I had an agent.”
And …
Look: Jax is doing the right thing. She’s writing another book. She’s been published once. She’ll do it again.
But also:
Why does this industry have to be so damn ungenerous to its authors? Why can’t its people simply be truthful? If you win a competition, why not make sure that the winner has a copy of its rules. If you’re an agent rejecting an author, why not do so without cattiness? If you’re an agent, don’t say one thing to the author and another to the publisher. If you’re the publisher and you are pleased with sales of book #1 but cautious about book #2, why not say exactly that to the author and explain why?
The key here is the industry’s problematic ‘niceness’. The publisher ‘struggled terribly’ to give the author bad news. Don’t struggle. An investment banker doesn’t struggle. A market gardener doesn’t struggle. A plumber doesn’t struggle. Just tell the truth. And do so without personal charge.
This shouldn’t be hard, right? And yet stories like Jax’s are all too common.
It’s not you. It’s them.
I’d add to that agents who never get back to you. I’m not talking about those who don’t respond to an initial submission (although I can’t for the life of me understand why those notorious for not responding don’t have an automated reply that requires the press of a button to let the author know for certain the answer is no), but agents who enjoy reading the partial submission, tell you they’ve enjoyed reading it, request the full which you promptly send, and then that’s it. You never hear from them again. I’ve heard of a number of agents who’ve done this and had the misfortune to go through it myself – two polite emails, one at the three month mark, one at the six month mark, asking when they think it’s likely they’ll get their thoughts to me, and nada. No response. I wasn’t even worth their time for a one line response. If they don’t think the book is right for them for whatever reason, surely it’s common courtesy to let the author know rather than just ghost them? At least I know which agent to avoid submitting to with the next book!
I agree with chellebelle – Ghosting! Had exactly this happen to me too – hopes raised sky high by agents that ‘love’ your book and then never reply even to the most polite nudge months down the line. I don’t know many subbing authors who haven’t experienced it. No unsigned writers publicly name and shame repeat offenders because they’re scared to gain a reputation as being a ‘difficult’ author to work with – never mind the ‘difficult’ agents we have to sub to (because some agents do this over and over and we subbing authors compare notes in private!) And the ghosting can go on even once you’re signed – several examples I could quote, some big named agents too.
Is it just ‘niceness’, Harry? Or is it that agents and publishers own the balance of power in the industry and know another aspiring author will be just round the corner? (And yes, I know there is a lot of niceness too!)
I don’t think it is niceness or nastiness, I think it is the tedium of something endlessly repeated. I don’t mean that it is the right thing to do, but I rather suspect that at the start of working as an agent you are enthusiastic and will answer everything, but, after a lot of barely readable query letters a part of you gives up, as indeed it does for the author, and they can’t be bothered to answer. It is actually why, after a few ‘ghosts’ I simply didn’t try any more and went for self-publishing. At least there the only person you are boring is the reader!!!! Sorry, I love exclamation marks!!!!
Agents. Publishers. Mine is a small Indie publisher. Spent a very long time telling me she was delirious about my second book. Eventually, I thought it was ready and I sent it in. In the meantime she had expanded to include an editor-in-chief. I gathered this person would make the decision or suggestions about the ms. Nothing. I wrote to ask how things were going. Nothing. I crept up on her in LinkedIn, asked again. Nothing. Eventually, i wrote to the publisher – this is after a year – and apparently this other person had decided the ms needed too much work done on it and she just couldn’t spare the time. Fine….but a year? And to this day she hasn’t actually spoken/written to me. Why am I not even worth an email?
Well. I’ve done quite a lot to that ms now and am looking for an agent for it. That publisher has always discouraged her authors from having one, but frankly I would like someone who is on my side and knows the industry more than I do. Yes, I know there can be problems with agents too – and yes, I have sent out innumerable submissions and had to guess from the silence that they weren’t keen.
And to tell the truth, unless I run out of options, I’d prefer it was published by some other publisher.
That is horrid. What a cow.
I had the same thing from a magazine editor once. He’d already paid me for the article commissioned by the previous editor, so he had to go ahead with it but he edited it down and changed it so much that I didn’t recognise it when it went into print.
Years later he and I became friends and he apologised for his behaviour. He said, ‘I was a new editor and I wanted to make a mark, you had such a British POV I didn’t think it was right for our (USA) magazine.’
However, amazingly, he used me again and I actually went on writing for that magazine until it went bust! Nothing is as straight-forward as it seems: apparently!
Did no one see this bit? “PPPS: I didn’t tell you about my headgear. My bad. I am wearing a green bandana with an old badger’s tail hanging out at the back. I look dashing, but somewhat smelly.”
What headgear is harrybingham wearing and why is it smelly? I’m imagining an old school neck brace with braces on it… Think of Joan Cusack’s character in Sixteen Candles. If nothing else, it’s making me laugh imagining harry chasing after twins with this metal around his head. Better yet, the twins placing bells on his headgear when he’s asleep so they can hear him coming a mile away. Overactive imagination you say… nah just the right amount of imagination.
Totally agree with Chellebelle and the others—we are quite resigned to stony silence over a first sub, but when someone asks for the whole ms( enthusiastically!) surely it is not too much to ask for a simple email, even if they changed their minds and could not be bothered to even read the first page. Simple courtesy, people! A polite form letter, copy paste, and go. It is horrible to be ghosted. People like you, Harry, who knows plenty of agents, should broadcast this. Thanks!
The lack of professional and courteous communication from working professionals in the publishing industry has become a hot-button topic with me. The excuse, if any is offered, runs something like: “you don’t understand, I get *hundreds* of Emails every day. I have hundreds of pages to read every day. Dozens of meetings! Phone calls! Conferences, and oh, you wouldn’t believe the pressure!” To which my response is: “Gee, that sounds a lot like my day job. Except that somehow, I can find the time (20 seconds is usually all it takes) to acknowledge receipt of an Email–especially when it’s something that I myself requested from the sender.
I guess it’s just a cultural norm within the publishing industry, but I just can’t understand it. If I acted that way in my business, I wouldn’t last a week.
Vin, my sentiments exactly and mentioned here long ago. It also has a simple remedy. Stop taking submissions until you catch up. How simple is that? Why don’t they tell authors not to send in submissions on their websites until they clear the backlog? Why? Why keep accepting them and then whine all day that their too busy to send a 20 second email. The problem is, too many authors suffer in silence, or suck up to them.