"Am I so naive that I didn't know they hated us so much?" emails one highly regarded literary agent after reading the steady stream of abuse heaped on her profession by anonymous editorial staffers lately. "You should hear the stories I have about lazy, neglectful and actually mean editors who abandon books after buying them, don't return phone calls from authors and make their assistants do all the work—but you don't hear me generalizing and complaining, because for every editor I no longer choose to submit to because of bad behavior, there are plenty of others who are passionate, motivated and intelligent collaborators."

"The person who said 'All they care about is making a sale and garnering their commission' has obviously never worked with me," this agent continues, "or many of my wonderful colleagues (and definitely doesn't work on literary fiction!). And the idea that 'they make all the money while we do all the work'? I'd love to watch some of these complaining editors try to handle all the behind-the-scenes work agents do and see if they last a day. I'm part shrink, part lawyer, part editor, part mediator, part cheerleader, part publicity and marketing agitator—never mind wading through hundreds of queries a day to find the projects that are worth sending to them."