Saturday, June 23, 2007

Spamming Agents = Bad

Please only reply to the email links in the text below.

FAO Publishers & Literary Agents - I have a fully completed and critiqued non-fiction manuscript together with graphically designed cards available for publishing.

For more information, please read this email or email me at writer_seeks_publisher@lycos.com to request the synopsis, some sample chapters, the card graphics and the promotional website.

This book and card set will help you to discover a new way to heal yourself. It is a unique, revolutionary, easy to use system; this set has also been designed to show you a clear and simple way by which you can remove past and present health issues aiding the healing of yourself from within.

Each set of cards has been ingeniously and carefully structured allowing the user to discover which mental, emotional and physical impediment prevents their progress forward in life.

This book teaches a revolutionary new way to heal yourself easily today!

My Critique company commented:
This is an amazing manuscript. Many, many readers will benefit from this material. Thank you for writing this manuscript. This will be a huge success! I do wish you luck with this endeavor. However, you will not need luck. You have an awesome manuscript, and a special gift with words.

Dear Writer-Seeks-Publisher,

I thought publically posting and making fun of your spam email on my website would clue you in the first time, but apparently it didn't. Fortunately you have magic cards to heal yourself from the emotional trauma when you don't get published because you pisssed off potential agents and publishers by randomly spamming their emailboxes instead of submitting your idea in the proper format, which can be found on the very page from which you got my email address.

Also, your game of randomly shooting off emails when you don't get the desired response might result in said target to respond negatively by posting your message in full on her website because she has a migraine and doesn't want to deal with you anymore.

Thanks!
The Rejector

13 comments:

Unknown said...

I especially like the slimy praise from the critique company. How stupid can you be not to realise that they will ALWAYS say your manuscript is great; otherwise, you would never come back!

Never trust praise from someone you are paying to do a job.

Hope the migraine settles down :)

ORION said...

It's right up there with: "Dear Agent"
Learning how the publishing business works is an important part of writing and one which is often ignored. Spamming agents (and I have seen it with novels also) or asking them to read an excerpt on your website is rude and assumes an agent's time is less valuable than your own.
JMHO

Cassandra said...

Ba-ZING!




Funny stuff.

angelarene said...

The cards, obviously, do not work. The writer himself,seems unable to cure his ailment of Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Shame.

writtenwyrdd said...

Idiots abound. Sympathies on the migraine!

jjdebenedictis said...

Yeah, I'm sure your freakin' cards are better at diagnoses than my doctor who went to university for six years. Cardboard is so perceptive, after all.

Dave Kuzminski said...

Gosh, I just received the same email last night, but couldn't recall why it seemed so familiar. Upon returning here to see what else might be posted, I remembered. Guess that's one guy who won't be glad of that.

Bernita said...

Is this your May 16th guy at it again?

Rob said...

Did the spammer even include the name of the critique company to give it an ounce of credibility? The critique company could have bee his/her parents for all you know.

Of course, you aren't going to bother asking because this would just make the spammer think you want to help and encourage more of these emails.

Heather Dudley said...

OY vey. Too bad Miss Snark's not around any more to whack this one with the clue bat.

When you give someone money to critique your work, you can absolutely expect they're going to be FULL OF SHIT.

My free critique group gives phenomenal (and sometimes brutal) feedback that is literally priceless. And the only thing I've ever paid them is attention on their novels!

Richard said...

I am curious, what are the legal implications of publicly publishing their query (aside from publicly carping about it)?

Is there no sort of client-vendor confidentiality agreement (spoken or unspoken)?

Anonymous said...

Several writers I know (including myself) received this idiotic spam. This guy obviously harvested addresses from various online groups/message boards.

How stupid can you get?

I'm sure several agents and publishers will reply to his solicitation, however: scammy fee-charging agents and vanity publishers.

Anonymous said...

I once received a cyber-rejection from an agent I'd never heard of & had never sent anything to.

I responded to the e-mail addy given, saying, "I'm sorry, but I'm not accepting cyber-rejections from unknown agents at this time. Accordingly, please consider yourself contracted as my agent for the attached manuscript..."

Needless to say, I didn't attach anything.

The next day, I got the same e-rejection. The bonehead didn't even bother to read the e-mail.

There's one born every minute, and in cyberspace that contracts to every 10 seconds.

T2