REPOST

Since it’s Friday and we’re all on twitter, let’s talk about authors, querying, publishers and agents. Right, just like every other day.

I, for one, believe authors should query as many lit. agencies/publishers as they can. It’s not like they’re only going to read your query. No one should expect exclusivity in the literary business because in the end it’s about numbers just like any other a business. Publishing is about demographics and demand, not about writing and telling stories. Funny thing is, it wouldn’t make any money otherwise. Those who still believe publishing is anything more than that are digging their own graves. It’s a business, people.

That said, we can move on to a slightly different area of the same topic: that’s right, I’m going to talk about rejection. I understand this whole rejection thing a tad too well for my age. Or Terry Pratchett’s.

Most of the times the reason why a publisher or an agent reject your work is because they think you suck. They are usually right.

If you’re aiming for making a novel the next mainstream hit but cannot convince a single person who spends his day reading, you do suck. Heck, how can you possibly expect people to get to the end of your book craving for a sequel if editors can’t stand your query?

The thing is simple: there are various degrees of sucking. You can suck as an author because you haven’t read enough books to know what is a book per se. You can suck because you’ve read just enough books to make a simple story, but worship all the wrong ones. You can also suck because you read too much and tries too hard on making something that sounds original to you but meaningless to the world.

So, you suck. Now that we know what the problem is, we can solve it.

Stop sucking. Read more, read better, don’t be a whiny pretentious kid. I don’t care if you’re better than Stephenie Meyer: she is selling and you’re not. Learn from your mistakes, from the mistakes of others and most importantly: always deliver what people want. Writing the most complex saga ever means nothing if no one reads it. Bonus points if you starve yourself to death. If you have time to complain about not having found the right agent to the job, spend it on convincing a wrong one you’re the right author.