LOL. Some schmagent named Jenna Satterthwaite wanted to have a go at my finding that a typical writer will spend $25,000—this is on average; individual results are highly variable, and the expense guarantees nothing, and anyone who claims they can get you read for a fixed dollar amount is scamming you—to get to the point where agents read, but she didn't have anything, so she and her disciples attacked my character and my writing. Ordinary shit. Never mind that her writing is full of emojis, unnecessary exclamation points, objectively bad register calls, and toxic positivity.
The comments are hilarious. These people really think that if they validate her ego online, they'll get represented and turned into lead titles any day now. The 2000s term for this behavior was "white knight" or "nice guy." They would turn on her if they realized there was a 0.00% chance of this supplicancy getting them turned into major literary figures.
Honestly, obscure card games are more worth your time than this.
You're not wrong. Laura McGrath studied literary agents and found that half the major awards go through _25_ of them.
There are ~10,000 people calling themselves literary agents and you can probably get one of the other 9,975 by cold-calling if you're willing to waste 5-10 years of your life and put up with indignity of the query system. And you may find an agent who is a wonderful person and who loves your work but still die on submission (which literally doesn't happen if your agent has any clout) or get a $5,000 deal with no marketing. Not exactly a success story.
Writers who claim the query system works are a type Vegas knows well. "I have a system." You don't. Slot machines are designed to exploit biased retrieval and make you think you're winning when you are slowly losing. Even if you did have a system, you'd lose your EV on overpriced hotels and food. The house has a system; that's how they keep the lights on.
To get one of the ~25 literary agents who can make real deals happen, you have to extort a billionaire or member of a royal family. And given that extorting a royal or a CEO has a nonzero chance of just getting you killed, it's probably not worth it.
He's a trickster....
What happened on Tuesday?
LOL. Some schmagent named Jenna Satterthwaite wanted to have a go at my finding that a typical writer will spend $25,000—this is on average; individual results are highly variable, and the expense guarantees nothing, and anyone who claims they can get you read for a fixed dollar amount is scamming you—to get to the point where agents read, but she didn't have anything, so she and her disciples attacked my character and my writing. Ordinary shit. Never mind that her writing is full of emojis, unnecessary exclamation points, objectively bad register calls, and toxic positivity.
I'll give a link, but I honestly don't think it's worth your time. I don't need to be defended, since I haven't been competently attacked yet. It's at: https://jennasatterthwaite.substack.com/p/is-querying-really-pay-to-play
The comments are hilarious. These people really think that if they validate her ego online, they'll get represented and turned into lead titles any day now. The 2000s term for this behavior was "white knight" or "nice guy." They would turn on her if they realized there was a 0.00% chance of this supplicancy getting them turned into major literary figures.
Honestly, obscure card games are more worth your time than this.
It’s amazing what fools will do when another one of them they perceive to have power does, well, anything
You're not wrong. Laura McGrath studied literary agents and found that half the major awards go through _25_ of them.
There are ~10,000 people calling themselves literary agents and you can probably get one of the other 9,975 by cold-calling if you're willing to waste 5-10 years of your life and put up with indignity of the query system. And you may find an agent who is a wonderful person and who loves your work but still die on submission (which literally doesn't happen if your agent has any clout) or get a $5,000 deal with no marketing. Not exactly a success story.
Writers who claim the query system works are a type Vegas knows well. "I have a system." You don't. Slot machines are designed to exploit biased retrieval and make you think you're winning when you are slowly losing. Even if you did have a system, you'd lose your EV on overpriced hotels and food. The house has a system; that's how they keep the lights on.
To get one of the ~25 literary agents who can make real deals happen, you have to extort a billionaire or member of a royal family. And given that extorting a royal or a CEO has a nonzero chance of just getting you killed, it's probably not worth it.
Glad it wasn't just me. But these days you could blink and Armageddon might have happened overnight.