Tony Woodlief discusses that little known price we all pay for civilisation:
When dealing with our credit union, for example, there is a probability approaching one (and they test the theoretical limits of the asymptote) that the teller will make some annoying little error -- funds deposited in the wrong account, a withdrawal amount wrong, etc. These errors are usually resolved after about an hour of my wife's labor, and one or two phone calls. Fortunately, we don't have to deal directly with the credit union much more than once a quarter. Factoring in the average hourly wage in the U.S. ($16.23 in 2001, as computed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics), we can thus derive a yearly Incompetence Tax levied on us by our credit union of $64.92. Given a membership of roughly 200,000, this amounts to a total annual Incompetence Tax of $12,984,000.
My Name Is Sei Shonagon
Following reports that editors and agents pay little regard to their slush piles, there was more encouraging news for unpublished authors this week in Chatto & Windus's acquisition of My Name Is Sei Shonagon, a novel that arrived as an unsolicited, unagented manuscript. But the story, about a girl of mixed parentage growing up in Japan, did not entirely sell itself: the husband of the Australian author, Jan Blendsdorf, had given it some extra help, phoning up Rebecca Carter at Chatto to tell her how good it was. 'From his description it sounded wonderful, so when it arrived as an unsolicited submission, I read it,' Carter said.
Literary Exchange
I don't accept unsolicited email submissions.
The vast majority of editors don't even respond to unsolicited email submissions. Thanks. G.
So don't send them. It's the moral equivalent of spam. My two cents: get an agent.
I like sending them. The publishing industry is the moral equivalent of incest. I've got two books, one fiction and one nonfiction, both of which are better than anything Simon & Schuster has published in the last ten years. Here's the sort of thing agents say. This is from Jody Rein: "I hope you find an agent who understands this book better than I do, and can help you find an enthusiastic publisher. You're a terrific and imaginative writer. Maybe you ought to go straight to Farrar Strauss or Knopf or Susan Kamil at The Dial Press and let the dense agents of more linear and transparent literature be damned." Thanks again. G.
Who are you? You must be a virus. I'm deleting your first email. Identify yourself or to hell with your spam.
Dear Mitchell: I'm not a virus. Don't be silly. Go to this website:
http://everyonewhosanyone.com
Stick your name in the search thingy at the bottom and all will be revealed to you as if by magic. Thanks again. G.
It may not be a virus but it's still SCAM. Can't wait till this is illegal.
What, pray tell, could possibly be a scam about it? I've come up with a better alternative than the LMP which costs $389 a year and I'm giving it away for free. Golly gee. What a scam. It's gotta be a communist plot. Somebody did something nice for a change. The world's gonna fall apart. Or maybe you meant SPAM. Nope. Not that either. Just a brave, free American guy cracking himself up and providing a little insight into the psyche of an average, run of the mill editor at some big publishing company. Now, is there anything about your job that you'd like to say? G.
Nope.
Thot not. G.
