Last week, literary agents blogged about failed queries on Twitter–generating a query fail feed, an agent fail thread, a GalleyCat post, and an emotional debate. Curtis Brown agent Nathan Bransford (pictured) decided not to participate, declaring “positivity week” on his blog instead.

His post generated more than 200 comments. Here’s an excerpt: “in these tough times people definitely could use some more positivity, so consider this a humble request to go out and spread it … everyone who is thinking of querying me that you do not have to fear becoming blog/Twitter fodder. Ever. Never ever. Not when you’re querying, and not when you’re a client.”

Colleen Lindsay, a FinePrint Literary Management agent, responded: “The idea wasn’t to mock but to educate. We were pointing out mistakes that people make over and over again in their queries, as well as those queries that were clearly sent out without any regard to spelling, grammar or typos. We used no personal identifiers of any sort, and didn’t mention names or titles of books.”