GalleyCat - The First Word On the Book Publishing Industry

It's Enough to Give Aspiring Writers Paranoia

Over at Miss Snark's blog yesterday, a writer's feelings were hurt when, after "I pitched a book to a very well known agent," who asked to see another one of the author's manuscripts, a friend told her that the agent was "publicly ridiculing the first book...to another group of writers" and how could the agent be so mean? So Miss Snark tells her to "suck it up," but also advises against working with the agent further. The comments from other readers go back and forth on the issue—is the agent really a jerk? is the friend a jerk for bearing bad news?—but there's even more fun in store when somebody brings up the blog of a former MacAdam/Cage summer intern, in which we learn just what happens to unsolicited manuscripts once they arrive at the publisher's office:

"One of the submissions, however, really tickled me. I'm keeping it. I wish I could tell you about it, but it's written by someone who claims to be eighteen, and appears to be written by someone who is nine and has no understanding of human sexuality. Oh, my God. I may show that to the ladies. Seriously."

Honestly, though, it's almost worth going through this guy's entire June 2005 archive just for the spectacle of a 19-year-old kid lecturing people on how to submit manuscripts, and to hear about how he straightened the place out after the "seriously unorganized" editor Pat Walsh left to pursue his writing career.

UPDATE: The intern in question, apparently upset that we'd called attention to his juvenile boasts, removed many of the June 2005 posts over the weekend, but replaced the one about the manuscript with a nude picture of Kathy Bates and a taunting message for this blog.


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