Can You Hear Me NOW?: Literary Agents

It still astounds me that agents have to repeat themselves so often.

Read submission guidelines. Give me the story. Make me care. Read submission guidelines. Know your hook. Don't beg, brag, bribe, or badmouth.

Oh...and read submission guidelines.

I'm a lurker. Yes, I'll admit it. For every 100 tweets/blog posts I read, I may comment once. Sure, not great for visibility, but why ask a question that hundreds of hopefuls have already asked? Sure, the agent will see your username, but it will also be irrevocably attached to a redundant, well-intended yet ill-informed remark.

Agents are crazy people. Writers slave away on their own books, combing over minutae to make it presentable. But agents do that, too - with multiple clients at a time. While reading stacks upon stacks of query letters. Query letters that strangle their inboxes. Letters that chase them home at night via Kindles, iPads, and various other electronic devices.
 
Not to mention the calls they make, the connections they work, the passion they put out, the headaches they endure - all to sell your book to a publisher.
 
How insane is it that they invest their time, care, and energy into something that's not even a sure deal? That takes guts.

Agents have it. And successful writers should, too.

Thus my continual head-shaking at publishing illiteracy. Don't get me wrong - this isn't me being superior. I used to be just as clueless as the next. But I refuse to just go to Half-Price Books, pick up last year's edition of Writer's Market, shut my eyes, flip it open, and point.

There used to be excuses for that kind of non-strategy. Today, we have Writer's Digest (print and online!), countless books written by experienced literary agents and/or published authors (I own 15, at last count), Twitter for the more conversational exchanges, and blogs! Oh glorious blogs!

Forgive the abundance of exclamation points. They've been stricken from everywhere but here.

If you're out there, future agent, I want you to know I think you're nuts. In the most inspiring, humbling, and contagious way.  I hear you. And I can't wait to work with you.

As for me, the writer? Well...I am just as nuts as you are. Cheers.