Like Miss Manners, only better

Et in arcaedia, ego. posted in April about etiquette during submissions that may have been overlooked. Good advice about turnarounds, exclusives and resubmitting.

My favorite though, was the disclaimer:

But, first, a disclaimer -- do not query me for submission on this blog. Like Miss Snark, I find this approach rude. (In her case it's particularly amusing as the person sending the query doesn't know her identity. It's like applying for a job at a company with no name, no address, and no verifiable track-record.) Thinly veiled questions that lack the paragraph of summary about the book still count, too. Just take your chances with the rest, and submit an actual query. Make no mistake. This blog (and others like it -- see sidebar of agents who blog) are a service above and beyond. It's not in my job description. It's neither authorized nor forbidden by the company I work with. Very few agents are out there making this kind of information available. Treat the agents who generously spend their time on such things like the valuable resource they are. (While I'm at it, ditto for agents at writers conferences -- those that attend them are actually a fairly small percentage of agent-kind.)