Readers and writers blog

As with most writers, my experience with literary agents has been, while not all negative, generally one of rejection. So after I recently mass-emailed a lot of them, it was a pleasant surprise to read some of their responses.

Now I don’t do much to promote this website other than writing for it. In fact, the only promotion I’ve ever done was the mass-emailing — well, let’s call it what it really was: I spammed them all, although the spam at least was in intelligible English and not promoting Viagra.

And here’s why: I felt someone other than me — and you, o revered readers — should have an occasional look at what writers have had the courage to let us post in our nonfiction, fiction and poetry sections.

Writing is hard work, and showing it to someone else can be even harder because it further weighs down the burden of work with the burden of courage.

I particularly have in mind one of our featured writers, Joseph Cigan, a nice guy from Chicago who is sweating through his first novel, Sniper in the Mist, and is beset by all those second thoughts, third thoughts and endless doubts about what he has written, bless his soul.

But I’m also thinking about Steve Karmazenuk, a nice guy from Montreal who managed to get his science fiction novel, The Unearthing, into print but still is struggling to promote it. Not to mention the other writers in our Works section who have lent the products of their talents to us.

And so I sent the following email to 1,045 of the nation’s top literary agents:

Dear Sir or Madam:

This is not a submission but a one-time note to let you know that our website, Readers and Writers Blog (http://www.readersandwritersblog.com/), publishes works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry that may be of interest to you either now or at some point in the future.

We seek no gain other than to help aspiring writers be noticed by those influential in the publishing world, which in turn may attract other aspiring writers to our nonprofit website.

Thank you for any consideration you may give us.

For the uninitiated who may be out there, it’s been a long time since a writer sent a manuscript to a publisher. Nowadays, you need a literary agent, and they can be as steely-hard to convince — or even reach — as the publishers were.

Well, a few of them were out of the office, and a surprising number were out on maternity leave. One of them, Rick Balkin of the Balkin Literary Agency, was traveling incognito.

Michael Murphy at Max & Co. said he was away from his email, but “not at any St. Patrick’s Day parade. I’m not even particularly Irish. Tom Murphy impregnated my fine French family of Genet’s & Bossardet’s and stuck us with his peat bog digging name. I am, however, feeling lousy. I plan on lying down to see where this goes. Until further notice, I am gone from email with my phone turned off. Just one of those things.”

Only seven bounced our email back to us — the way Yahoo’s qmail-send program put it was that the particular IP address “did not like recipient” — and one IP couldn’t accept our email because its user’s mail folder was full.

And now the heroes — remember, these are not minor-league agents — who responded with a kindness that we will try to repay with links to their own or associated web pages:

• Anthony Arnove of Roam Agency, who said he’d keep our link.

• Whitney Lee of the Fielding Agency, who said she’d check out our site and added a wish that we “enjoy the week.”

• Matt Wagner of Fresh Books, who sent his regards and said he’d check us out, too.

• Helen Zimmerman of the Helen Zimmerman Literary Agency in New Paltz, N.Y., a neighbor of ours, who sent her thanks.

• And last but not least, Joan West of Bennett and West Literary Agency, who thanked us for our note, found our site excellent and said we are “doing a good service for writers.”

Thank you, Joan, and thanks to the rest of the agents we emailed, even those who didn’t like us.

– Sid Leavitt

NOTES:

1. The book image at the top is the only response we got from Manhattan literary agent and author Katharine Sands. Maybe she found our pitch wanting. But if you want her ‘Making the Perfect Pitch,’ here’s one place to get it.

2. Hey, Ned Leavitt Agency, what’s up with that “if you don’t hear from us within four weeks, please feel free to approach other agents.” Ned, this was Sid calling.