I'm continually amazed how many writers (and ALL of the writing magazines, for more obvious reasons) take the side of agents and publishers against writers, always urging us to accept whatever shabby or even illegal treatment they hand us.
There are several mistakes in thinking: yes books are unique. So are paintings. Can you offer paintings for open sale or not?
No agents aren't buyers. But neither are they job applicants (if they were, they'd have to do things our way, wouldn't they) But actually my comments here apply to editors and publishers as well.
As far as the idea that you can go about your life while these nabobs are possibly reading your work...come on, now. You spend a long time writing a novel. It will take you a long time to produce another one. If you were to go along with this thing and wait for months (IF you hear back) for people to decide, one by one, whether to read your partial, then your MS, it would take a year just to canvass ten prospects.
And a main message from my post. THEY do not set the parameters of your relationship with them, YOU do. If they make demands you don't like, you walk. Simple as that. There are plenty enough agents you could be talking to while some twit takes a month to read a chapter.
Then it's just as well that you're happy being self-published, lin, since you feel such a strong resentment against the (long) accepted practices of the industry. Which is fine for you. May you do well in all your endeavors. But it seems to be that it's rather unfair that you're so determined to share your misconceptions and misconstructions of traditional publishing with those who do want to break in.
No, agents do not set the parameters for what we do and when we do it, but neither should we do so for them. Both should have an equal right to set their own perameters for any relationship. You state what you are willing to do, they state what they are willing to do; then each side respects the others decision. While arguing against shabby treatment of authors, you seem to be arguing for disrespect of agents and editors; but respect and fair-dealing is a two way street. If an agent says, I don't want to look at manuscripts that are under consideration elsewhere, we have, as you so correctly state, a perfect right to look elsewhere for representation. Writers might well consider, however, whether they would want a busy, experienced agent to represent them, or someone who has a lot of time on his or her hands.
As for your comparison with paintings, it's wrong on at least two counts. Once someone buys a painting they are not expected to spend further time and money making that painting available to the rest of the viewing public. Neither does the buyer necessarily enter into a long term relationship with the painter.
And whether or not a writer sits around and waits for a reply, or whether they get right to work on another project, is completely up to them. Some go one way and some another, but it's their choice. Expecting other people to change the way they do business in order to better accomodate that choice seems extremely unfair to me. (And I'm in the group that sits around and waits.)
I'm continually amazed how many writers (and ALL of the writing magazines, for more obvious reasons) take the side of agents and publishers against writers, always urging us to accept whatever shabby or even illegal treatment they hand us.
I seriously doubt you'd find many professionals that would strongly disagree with my statement of how to handle queries, partials and MS.
You seem to be contradicting yourself here, but perhaps I'm just being dense. And while we may disagree on the subject of what constitutes shabby treatment, illegality is a lot easier to define, and I have to say that after decades in the business, I've never heard a professional writer encourage any other writer to accept illegal terms or treatment. Quite the reverse.
No agents aren't buyers. But neither are they job applicants (if they were, they'd have to do things our way, wouldn't they)
Quite right. They aren't job applicants, because they aren't
applying -- we are soliciting them. As always, the one soliciting is expected to do things in a manner chosen by the one being solicited -- or else go elsewhere.
But believe anything you want, lin. I'm not trying to convince you of anything; I doubt that I even could. As I indicated in my first paragraph, what disturbs me is that you seem so set on encouraging others to ignore and cast disrespect on the professional courtesies -- to their cost, not to yours or mine. By representing the whole thing in terms of an adversarial relationship, you may be setting a lot of people off on the wrong foot.
As John says, it isn't us versus them. It should be a mutually beneficial relationship, between people who show mutual respect and consideration. (In my own dealings with agents and editors over the years, I have never experienced the reverse. Never.) And as with any such relationship, you should begin as you mean to go on.
In any case, I believe I've made my viewpoint clear, you've certainly made yours unmistakably clear, and those who are about to submit manuscripts to agents themselves are by now undoubtedly quite capable of deciding whose advice they want to take.
