16 July 2007

Rather Poor Form

It's been a while since any of the contestants have done much to win the hearts of the judges in the Agent Pool competition. Today is no different.

Witness Agent 19, who bowed out today:

Dear Writer,

Thank you for your query. Unfortunately, your project is not right for the agency at this time.

Best of luck to you as you seek representation.

Warmest regards,

Agent [Okay, this line was my modification, to preserve anonymity...but fit with the first line, I thought]

Now, canned responses are nothing new. However, at least the others have programs which input the first name (or last) of the author in question. We'll ignore the fact that on their site, they even make the claim that if they're interested, you should expect a response...implying that if they're not interested, you shouldn't expect one. I'm not sure I would have been any more insulted by not receiving a response at all...

"Dear Writer"?

Do they adjust the response based on what they see in the query?

Dear Cash Cow...
Dear Author...
Dear Writer...
Dear Biped...
Dear Amoeba...

And since our last short response made it through the Translator with little for our efforts, we've made some minor adjustments. The moment you've all been waiting for:
Dear Nobody,

We hope our generic response has been enough to dissuade you from ever sending us future work for review. [it has] Space pirates are never going to be a big sell to the established houses, and to think it ever will be goes to show how naive you really are.

Keep searching for representation. Eventually you'll stumble across a scammer willing to take it on and you'll count yourself lucky.

Hope you burn in hell for sending us this dreck,

A Really Important Agent
Anyway, stay tuned next time for the latest episode of the Agent Pool...

2 comments:

  1. Ha! Ha! Ha! Dear Cash Cow. I'm still laughing.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's funny. After reading this, I had to go back and look at my agent rejection replies, and 2 did not even have my name at all, and the other said "Dear Author". Pretty impersonal, for sure.

    ReplyDelete

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