Glad they don't ask me what aftershave I wear!!!Thank you for posting this. As I'm in the throes of finishing my fifth Cornish Detective novel, I'm trying not to think about what I need to do next, which is to return to the humiliating process of querying, as well as doing something about self-promotion...and maybe self-publishing.
Having made getting on for 500 queries to literary agents and publishers with open submissions windows, what exasperates me more than anything about their demands, is that there's no conformity. They all want something different, when it comes to numbers of chapters, pages, words, fonts, formatting etc...I'm surprised they don't specify what type of aftershave you should be wearing as you submit!
More than any aspect of publishing, the way that literary agents operate as individual fiefdoms demonstrates the historical traditions of getting published, with the awful inefficiency seen as a right of passage. Agents do have a professional association—Association of Authors' Agents—but it's voluntary to join, so many agents don't.
