Mistakes in Today's Mail

I'm usually far too nice to make fun of queries, but today I have a headache and there are more than 200 of them. Please consider this educational, sanity-preserving, (your) ego-inflating--but not out-and-out mean.

Are any of these "put it down and reject" mistakes? Two. I'll let you guess which ones. But the rest are things you may wish to avoid.

I post this mostly so that you can see that a lot of our mail is very, very strange--and those scary statistics you hear about the odds of getting published are misleading--needlessly grim--as they include the very odd submissions, too.

And yes, these are all from just today:

• Apologizing for your query in the very first line. Four people did this today. This is akin to saying, "I'm sorry you have to spend time with me. If you want to leave, you can" the moment you meet a romantic prospect. No no no. 
• Queries under fifty words. If brevity is (as Dorothy Parker wrote) the soul of lingerie, yours consists of one ribbon and one doily. 
• Writing a book about recreational activities while under the influence of illegal drugs. Bad enough, but then assuming a, "So, you know how...? Isn't that funny?" tone. I'm sorry, no, I don't know about going to a skate park after shooting up. And it seems somewhat impolite to imply that I would. 
• S&M queries in the second person.  I think Emily Post would agree that one should not include such things in business correspondence.
• Sending a beyond-deadpan query for a humor book. 
• Sentences like, "So far you are thinking, why am I reading this right?"
• Discussing your financial difficulties in your query. This makes one uncomfortable. Uncomfortable is pretty far from, "Yes! I must see this book!" on the emotional spectrum.
• If your work is called Poison, do not call your files, "Poison for [name of agent].doc." Actually, this one amused me, and I'll take a look. 
• Sending the work in seven separate emails (one chapter per). This makes it impossible to keep all your work in one place at one time (or apply my nifty multi-colored labels). Then I worry that I'll reply to one, and not others, then forget about it, then reject it again. Bad. Bad bad bad. Headache=increase. 
• "I won't lie and say this doesn't need polishing."
• Don't slip in and out of third person when describing yourself. 
• Four ellipses and three exclamation points in the first paragraph of the pitch...sigh!
• Quoting unfavorable reviews of your first project. You would do this...why?
• Saying, "Thank you for agreeing to represent me"--twice--before I've even seen the work. 
• "I have written what I consider, a good book, that I hope will intrigue you. I have never made an attempt at writing before, but I believe this book has all the elements of a best seller."
• Emoticons. No.  
• Spending the first paragraph talking about how your market is glutted.
• Saying of the competing works: "They are all full of crap."
• Eight footnotes in the body of your query = bad. 
• And finally, my very favorite: writing, in the very first line, that you would rather work without an agent.