Pub Rants

Tagged snail mail

No Reply At All

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: Finally getting around to blogging today.

What’s playing on the iPod right now? CALLING ALL ANGELS by Train

It’s the end of the era, and I have to say it makes me a little sad. Today Sara and I decided to no longer respond to query letters sent to us by snail mail. As much as it pains me to be one of “those” agencies that doesn’t respond to writers, it just doesn’t make sense to spend the time, the resources, and sacrifice the poor trees to kindly mail people a letter that informs them that we only accept inquires electronically.

We have done everything in our power to make the information of how to submit to us as widely available and easy to access as possible—both on the web and via print mediums.

Most things sent to us over the snail mail transom don’t remotely fit with what we clearly state we are looking for and it’s time to stop wasting paper, ink, and manpower on responding. From the ones we have received in the past, it’s obvious that the writers who haven’t contacted us via our submission guidelines are not researching and targeting us specifically.

From this day forward, anything received via snail mail goes into the recycling bin that is picked up every other month by our shredding service.

But if you send that query by email, we do read each and everyone that comes in and we do respond (although we can’t guarantee that a reply will reach you as we are often foiled by spam filters etc.)

So save that tree. Go electronic.

Mail, Mail, Where Can You Be?

by Kristin Nelson

STATUS: TGIF! I concluded a negotiation today which always feels good. The author is, of course, thrilled.

What’s playing on the iPod right now? AIN’T NOBODY BUT ME by Supertramp

This isn’t a publishing rant per se but it’s rather indirectly related. On Monday, the office lobby floor was retiled. In order to do that, the workers moved our mailbox center.

Let’s just say it was resting sideways on the stairs when I came in on Tuesday morning. I thought it a little odd but I certainly wasn’t able to move it so there it stayed. Well, Tuesday afternoon, the mail person comes to deliver the mail (and with MLK in there, more than the usual stack). He was in a huff because he had to come to each office instead of putting mail in the box like normal. Just to clarify, my office building isn’t large. On the second floor, there are only 8 suites—several of which are currently empty and awaiting new tenants. I understand that it was an inconvenience and outside of what a mail person would normally have to do to deliver the mail but it wasn’t a big deal either and probably took all of 8 minutes to do.

But I guess it was because since then, I haven’t received another piece of mail all week—even though the mailbox center was put back.

Now, I know we do everything electronically here but seriously, not a day goes by where we don’t get a piece of mail. And we are expecting royalty statements and checks.

We had to call today and find out why mail hasn’t been delivered. I guess I’ll have to tell my clients that it was circumstances beyond my control on why their monies are late!