United Agents open house submissions

[Jo Zebedee]

So true, Boneman.

But it is the parts of me that are not the writer (the wife, the mother, the person who has bills to pay, the person with a leaking roof that needs replacing, etc. etc. etc.) that gets pretty frustrated with the publishing industry!

All writers are people pouring their heart, soul, energies, time into creating a product which is exceedingly difficult to sell and will in all likelihood never receive a return. We do it because we cannot not do it, but the practicalities of that become so wearing! I do wish that agents and publishers would remember that sometimes in how they deal with us! To them I suppose we are just a mass of potentially lucrative crops that they can harvest or leave to rot at their leisure. But that's not what we are!! We're real people with very real, practical everyday needs and problems and bills to pay!

After all "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction"...

I neither have money nor a room of my own (I have the bottom end of the kitchen table, if that helps....) but I write fiction But I freed myself to do so by stopping looking for an agent or big publisher, going a blend of indie and small publisher and am much the happier for it. So if you feel you're writing for no return and the soul is being sucked out of you - change what you want from writing and that sense might ease.

@Serendipity (don't laugh...) this normally little whizz-bang where's my blaster sci fi writer has a literary fantasy coming out next year. Go figure.... (Add me to the list, then, as I'm not sure I'd rule out doing a literary sf if the right idea came along.) But the Irish setting suits literary work well...

What is literary fiction is a real oddity of a question to answer. For me, it's a feel - that the words have to be meaningful as well as just drive the story. But I might be way off beam....

 

[Brian G Turner]

Welcome also to the chrons forum @Squiggle!

We do it because we cannot not do it

With that sort of attitude you'll make it some day in some way.

 

[Squiggle]

Ah, Jo, we are in the same spot. I have neither money nor a room of my own either! The borrowing from Woolf was rather meant to mean simply that one still has practical needs as well as artistic ones!

I think you're right about the need to free oneself from the pressures of tangible outcomes other than the artistic product itself. But I am lately feeling rather Marxist about the whole creative enterprise! We produce the artistic artefact and then have to cast it at the feet of others to make much of it - perhaps we need to seize the means of production! haha!

In all seriousness, I suppose that is what self-publishing is striving to do - cut out the middle man so the creators can get direct access to the consumers. But self-publishing is still in its early stages in comparison to the (more conventional) publishing industry. I will keenly watch how it develops over our life-time.

x

 

[Serendipity]

It's now the new year and I haven't seen any activity from United Agents since the 21st / 22nd October on this open call, here or elsewhere. I'm going to assume that responses (most likely rejections) have been lost in the ether or jammed somewhere in the fibre-optics i.e. in effect give up on checking various sources for movement. So no more reports unless someone wakes me up on this topic...

However, please note what ctg wrote above about United Agents being a bit like Hollywood...

Edit... A Happy and Writeful New Year to all!

 

[Boneman]

UPDATE!!! I had an email from United Agents, asking if I'd found an agent yet, because they really liked the look of my submission!! My security system didn't like it, and I wasn't sure if it was a scam, but turns out that an assistant was going through and found mine, and wanted to present the whole thing to an agent. I did point out that I had actually withdrawn it...

 

[Serendipity]

UPDATE!!! I had an email from United Agents, asking if I'd found an agent yet, because they really liked the look of my submission!! My security system didn't like it, and I wasn't sure if it was a scam, but turns out that an assistant was going through and found mine, and wanted to present the whole thing to an agent. I did point out that I had actually withdrawn it...

Wow! I never expected something like this after all this time. Congratulations on taking a step forward. And fingers crossed your book will get further into the published world!

 

[ctg]

I had an email from United Agents, asking if I'd found an agent yet, because they really liked the look of my submission!!

Fantastic.

but turns out that an assistant was going through and found mine, and wanted to present the whole thing to an agent.

An assistant? Tells me everything I need to know about their house. No one bothered with the submissions, and they were left somewhere, while writers wonder WTH was going on. So, like I said, Hollywood. Let's hope you'll get mega lucky and land with something massive.

 

[Juliana]

UPDATE!!! I had an email from United Agents, asking if I'd found an agent yet, because they really liked the look of my submission!!

Ooh, yay! Exciting!

 

[Tirellan]

UPDATE!!! I had an email from United Agents, asking if I'd found an agent yet, because they really liked the look of my submission!! My security system didn't like it, and I wasn't sure if it was a scam, but turns out that an assistant was going through and found mine, and wanted to present the whole thing to an agent. I did point out that I had actually withdrawn it...

That sounds really promising.

 

[Boneman]

Yeah... more coming on that in the next week or two... or possibly three.

 

[aThenian]

Keep us posted @Boneman! Keeping fingers crossed.

 

[BDFiala]

Good luck with that @Boneman !