If you told me it was possible to not have agent, but have agents who dislike your blog enough to mention it, I would have looked at you like THIS o.0?! Because as busy as we are hearing agents are all the time you would assume that agents wouldn’t even notice if you had a blog much less explore it enough to know if they hate it.
The truth of the matter is THEY WILL GOOGLE YOU, YOU WILL PUT THE ADDRESS IN QUERY LETTERS, THEY MAY EVEN CLICK ON A LINK YOU GAVE SOME ONE ELSE IN AN AGENT CHAT WHEN YOU THOUGHT THEY WEREN’T PAYING ATTENTION. And so what right? You WANT agents to look at your blog. Your blog will be so shiny and awesome you may have to beat off potential representation with a stick! Even if you haven’t finished that novel is say, five years. (I’m finishing one this weekend, but that is neither here nor there.)
If you think like this I have $1,845,337,942.83 USD in a bank account in Nigeria I’d love to split with you. Please wire me a small $10,000 processing fee and I’ll give you your money.
What? I will.
Ok, I’m lying.
The thing is they may just hate your blog title. While you would think that some bad titles would be common sense to avoid. “Searching for an Agent Continuously Since 1993” “why agents suck” and “QUERYHATER09” some might not seem so bad to the person writing it like for example my former blog “The Desperate Authoress”
When the first agent told me she thought it made me sound… what was she said “Unappealing.”? I thought, well I’ll just cross her off my query list right now, because obviously we just aren’t a good match. Then the second agent, commented in a e-mail where she declined to represent my full manuscript (an urban fantasy for MG) that she thought it was inappropriate sounding for someone who wrote children’s fiction I maybe cried. I like to think that it was because she rejected my full with one line of not loving it as much as she thought she was going to, and spending more time insulting my blog than talking about my book- but really misery is misery. I’d swore I’d never blog again.
Ooops.
The thing is, I am desperate. Desperate for time, quiet, MORE COFFEE. Maybe forty five minutes all to myself. I’m not desperate for an agent, or a book deal, or in general. Those things I am willing to work for, not just lust after.
The desperate authoress is dead. Long live Angela Write Now.
And since I am starting a new blog and have near none followers. I am going to have a little contest. I am going to give away an Amazon gift card. I will add .50 for each follower up to 200 followers or $100. Contest ends April 30th. To win, you must be a blog follower, and you must comment on at least one blog post. You can receive a new entry for every post you make a comment on, but only one per blog post.
19 comments :
Oh dear, that's a new one for me - agents hating blog titles? Hmm, mine's "My Scribings", maybe should change it to "All Agents Are Beautiful" :p
Congrats on the new blog! And yay for the new contest! Have you seen Kristen Lamb's blog on wordpress? She's on Twitter too @KristenLambTX. She's got so much wonderful information on social media: blogs, Twitter, etc. I'm pretty new to all of it and her info has been so helpful (plus she's pretty funny).
You can't please everyone. You try your best and be true to yourself (as far as content is concern). Format, well you can always change that with enough time, money and imagination.
OK, I totally want to hear what you've got to say. Bring on the posts!
Okay, ouch. I just assumed they weren't even paying attention to my blog.
At one point, I had a couple of posts about experiencing self-doubt, which every writer in the history of ever does. And I hid them for a long time because I was afraid they'd make me look bad. They're unhid now, btw. I decided that if I'm blogging about writing and I pretend that isn't part of writing, then that's not fair to anyone.
Love the contest idea
How about no agent at all? Self-publish? eBooks? Possible? Probable?
Amanda Hocking: indie author goes viral
Congrats on your new blog!:D I'm sorry an agent didn't like it. That's weird. I've never heard of that happening before. Oh well. Obviously you're moving on! I'm excited to see your posts! :D
It's such a subjective biz...gets frustrating sometimes.
Congrats on the new blog--great contest!
I love the new blog title. And your layout/background/design is awesome! It's probably time for me to spruce up my blog. Maybe I'll get it all nice and pretty in time for Blog Every Day in April (which you should TOTALLY DO).
Anyway, looking forward to reading more! I'll be sure to pass on the word about your contest! :)
I suppose it's all about first impressions, especially on the Internet where people don't even read half the stuff people lovingly slave over to produce (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/percent-text-read.html), and seeing a title as positive as 'Write Now' is much more appealing than 'Desperate' =)
Wow, I never thought of that being a problem. Good luck in your pursuits!
Pick me pick me! =)
If you could follow me blog too, I would much appreciate it!
Best of luck in your quest!
I love your voice, and that's why I'm following you. To prove it, if I win the Amazon card, I will decline in favor of someone else. (Though on second thought, Kindle books on my wish list...)
Just kidding. I do love your voice.
Yeah... you're not the first story I've heard about an agent not liking someone's blog. I've become very careful about what I put out there...
It's a bit of a bummer, cause sometimes you just need to rant for a sec ;)
Suzi, that is likely the nicest thing any one has said to me ;)
Oh, no, sorry to hear your chances were squelched by your blog title! (to whatever degree) Angela Write Now sounds MUCH more positive--great new name. :)
I never thought much about whether an agent would NOT like my blog or my blog title. I think mine's okay though. It's just called:
Artzicarol Ramblings
I really enjoyed your blog and decided to follow. Can you check out mine at http://lifeorsomefacsimile.blogspot.com. By the way, I'm Bubba1063 on Twitter. Thanks.
^^ I'm following your blog. My life is a reasonable facsimilie.... ok maybe not REASONABLE
Wow, I would say it seems not wanting to look at your writing based on your blog title seems harsh but then again agents look at one sentence in a submission and decide everything based on that so I guess it's not crazy. Unfair yes, but crazy not so much.
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