Publishers and Agents and Sharks, Oh My!
Publishers and agents are on the Menu Tonight at Molly's Virtual Pub. What a refreshing turnabout!
Like a sinner in the hand of an angry God, agents hold the writer (with apologies to Jonathan Edwards) dangling like a spider over the fiery pit of hell.
We are in the writers' room here at Molly's Virtual Pub. Static electrical discharges crackle here and there like Frankenstein's laboratory. Whether it is from the critical mass of earthshaking, electric themes or merely the tension of writers longing to become authors, one cannot tell. Desperation lives here bathed in WiFi and the continuous staccato of keyboard pecking.
They ply their lonely and solitary trade surrounded by the crowd of others similarly engaged---alone together. Occasionally, you might see two in a huddle conferring, perhaps about the difference between using "continual" versus "continuous" or "farther" and "further."
One of these intense folks is a sometime limericist, though unlike Kathleen, rather more cynical and less playful. Who could blame him? He has papered a room with rejection slips for everything from children's books to novels.
Today, our Chum has cut loose with a handful of limerick poems pertaining to the hoops and hurdles he has jumped through for lo these many years. Read on if you dare…
The Agent
Get an agent for representation
Of the manuscript of your creation
For those publishers are
Less forgiving by far
Of a goof in your abomination.
Agent Etiquette
Now for heaven's sake, get to your knees
For these agents just don't give a sneeze
About that which you sent
And are bound to resent
Any email without "Thanks" and "Please."
Chum for a Shark
To get into print, the submission
Is a process for your work's audition
Such that your query letter
Had better be better
Than God's Ten Commandments rendition.
We are so enjoying this publishers and agents page that there are quite a few more limericks here than usual, is there not?
Submit!
The "submission" is properly named
It's a double entendre and aimed
So you'll rise above "slush"
In the pile where the rush
Of an intern assures you'll be maimed.
The Publisher
Once past the agent, there's more.
Now the publisher may wish to gore
Your soft underbelly
For Machiavelli
Is what she teethed on long before.
The Screwdriver
If you made it this far, dear survivor,
As an author and brand new arriver
On the publishing scene
Life is not yet serene
You're the screw for the book trade's screwdriver.
The Marketing Plan
When writing a marketing planPublishers and Agents and Sharks! Ouch, shall we bail from this room of bloody stumps? Where are those doctors and nurses?
Throw as much energy as you can
Into promising what
You will do when you've got
A signed contract in your eager hand.
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