Thursday, March 12, 2009


Twitter tips on how not to get published
Some people are pretty angry at agents and editors revealing the worst pitches they read, but it's instructive reading

There are some hurt feelings in online ego-space this week after a group of agents and editors, in what I can only see as a service to the world of books, decided to spend last Thursday tweeting about what makes them reject submissions.

The aim of the "Queryfail" game was to tweet about (unidentified) author queries that were coming in, and why they weren't being picked up.
From the insane - "My book is differentiated from Twilight because the vampires have wings, and are half-breed angels" and "My book is about a friendship based upon mutual vomiting practices in high school"; to the boastful – "Easily the boldest novel so far written in this fresh century of ours" and "My credentials for writing this book include: A divine mandate to speak the word of God"; to the frankly quite scary – "43 years of toiling within my own mind have come to an end with this manuscript!", it's a hilarious, and educational, read. I particularly like the tautological "This is my first attempt at writing a fictional novel", and the wonderful typo of "she mustard her power", but I'm bemused as to why "This book is The Notebook meets The Lord of the Rings" was passed over.

Agent Colleen Lindsay stressed that the idea wasn't "to mock or be intentionally cruel, but to educate" – but despite gathering a huge following on Twitter, there has been something of a backlash against Queryfail, with bloggers and authors alike variously calling it unprofessional, "incredibly sad", and (it says here) "cathartically sadistically odd".

Surely, if anything, it's a useful tool for those travelling the long and difficult road to publication, and I'm glad to see that, undeterred, the agents and editors are hoping to make it a regular occurrence.
I know I'll be following next time round – and in the meantime here's a handy round-up of dos and don'ts compiled by JacketFlap following the first Queryfail day.
Posted on Monday 9 March 2009 16.15 GMT guardian.co.uk

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