It Was On The Internet, So It Must Be True...Um Not!

I really do hate writing blog posts like this, but when I opened my email this morning, I was once again bombarded with the reminder that maybe it is time to rant a bit. For those of you who read this blog, or for those scan Twitter for interesting articles, I call on you to start forwarding this around.

Here is the situation.

Yes, today's round of emails contained only one, romance/women's fiction submission. The others, and yes, there were a ton today, included for an example:

• 5 children's books
• 3 memoirs
• 4 suspense thrillers similar to Steve Barry
• 2 narrative non-fictions
• 1 self-help book

And the amazing part is that this has been the way things have been going in the last 9 days that I have been back open since opening the agency.

One author, who I responded to last week in another wave of "why are you sending this to me" emails responded that "Greyhaus is listed as accepting historical writing." Um, yes, historical ROMANCE!!!

I know for some of you, I am preaching to the choir, and that is why I am calling on you to pass this around to all of your new author friends.

If you get an agent's name from a "secondary source" take the added step and go directly to the "primary source" that being the agent's website. Then, get this..... READ! See what that person represents and if that original source was correct.

Yes, these secondary sources (Query Tracker, Water Cooler, Agent Query...etc.) are really trying to help you. Their intentions are good. But the information is only as good as the people inserting the data and collecting the information.

Now, I do know that some of you will say that going to the website really doesn't help you. "The agents are not specific as to what they want." That again is false. Sure, they might not be saying the exact plot of a story involving a particular set of characters taking place in Helena, Montana." But they are VERY clear as to what they acquire and what they don't acquire.

Look, the prestige of being able to say you got rejected 300 times before being published only works if all of those people said that individual story was garbage and then you made millions of dollars off of the sales of it when one publisher took a chance on it. Being rejected over and over again because you submit it to people who don't acquire your genre is not a sign of success. It is a sign that tells most of us that instead of writing, you might want to take the time to learn about doing your research correctly.