Five Days and Four Nights Pt. II (Pronounce “Ptew!”)

First of all, let me just say that apparently 4/5 voters think I'm really awesome. Hooray for me. And also loaded questions. 1/5 said I was fairly awesome and 0/5 said I was barely awesome. I think two weeks is a bit long for a poll though, so I'm ending it a couple days early and moving on.

Continuing my mini-series of notably strange queries is a book whose concept and author I kind of liked. For starters, it had a really kick-ass opening line which I won’t repeat here, but met any challenge you could make for a clever, pithy, memorable, brief, funny, cynical opening line. It was great. Got my attention immediately. When I quoted it to others at the agency, they laughed out loud hearing it. They did not “LOL” they laughed. As in, I saw their reactions. Threw back their heads and guffawed like wolves howling at the moon. It was just that good. I further felt a connection with it because it was a young (college age) absurdist. I really wanted to take the guy personally under my wing. I actually asked my boss at the agency if I could contact him privately and help him with his book because I was so convinced this kid had potential. Unfortunately I was told it would essentially be a conflict of interest, so I did not.

Anyway, he clearly did need my (or someone of equal or greater skill than myself) to help him out because the majority of the included narrative was… well, it didn’t flow quite right. It wasn’t very much like a book. It was like reading a stand up act. A series of loosely connected events injected with humorous insights that came straight out of left field. In short: he writes like I write. He’d make a good comedian. It doesn’t translate so well to a novel.

I made the amateur mistake of giving him some feedback. I also totally overlooked the fact that his original query didn’t contain an actual query letter, just the sample. I sent a personalized request to see it rather than our form “please see our rules regarding submission” response. The result was that this bright eyed youth, who probably hadn’t gotten anything back from any other agencies yet (except rejections perhaps) was very interested in a dialogue. Which I wasn’t. These issues are pretty much yae or nae and after reading, I could see that there was absolutely zero chance we’d rep that book or that author no matter how much potential I thought the kid had. It was a sort of painful and awkward situation from which I had to extricate myself.

Oh well. If you’re out there, kid, I’m still rooting for you. And for the rest of you, I think his work in progress was called The Longing of Shina Ryo or something like that (a title which reminds me of the also awesome and absurd animation called “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya”). I’m still hoping that he’ll really work it and find an agency that does that kind of book and that we’ll all be able to see it in print some day. Good luck, young’un.

For the rest of ye, the lessons are as follows, as I have said many times; pick agents who represent your kind of work, follow their submission guidelines, and try not to sound pushy- even if you aren't too demanding, with how busy agencies can be, you don't want to risk it.

Next time, some words about a presentation on International Sales I attended last week at Big Corporate Internship and a rapid fire multi-piece conclusion to the all time strange queries series in "German Bros" OR "Five Days and Four Nights In Fabulous Rejection Pile Pt. III"