O authors. Dear authors. We’ve had this chat before, about how very necessary it is to proof your query emails to make sure you’re sending them to the right person – for instance, “seeking publication” instead of “seeking representation” from a publisher.

But agents are not exempt from this. I know you work in the industry. I know you’re busy. I know you’re repping a lot of authors and books right now.

But would it kill you to make sure you’ve copy-pasted the right name and reference into your query?

Because I will tell you this: It does not help your author’s case when you have very clearly copy-pasted (as in, I can see a different font and font size for this section) a reference into your email, and it is a reference to an author and book we do not publish. You’re obviously casting a wide net, and that’s okay…but please please please double-check everything in your email before you hit send. It doesn’t make you look good to have sent off a cold query with an entirely misguided opener, and it doesn’t exactly predispose us to looking favourably upon your client’s work, simply because we know we’d have to deal with you/your sloppiness in the future if we acquired the mss.

And yes, this has happened to us several times in just the past few weeks. It’s an epidemic.

And authors? If your book isn’t selling through your agent, you…might wanna figure out how you can look into how, exactly, that agent is making inquiries. To tell you the truth, I have no idea how one checks up on an agent’s progress, other than asking for submissions logs and responses, but I’m just cringing when I think of the response rate that that a screwed-up query from an agent who failed at Copy Pasta Class would get.