To Don'ts

In the process of querying and research, you run across blog after blog, article after article, about what not to do, what not to say, what not to write in your contributions to the many dozens of slushpiles you're sending your work to join. I won't regurgitate the tips; for those doing this job, you know already. For those maintaining slushpiles I've become a part of, googling me up and finding this place - who needs it?

For the latter, though, I would like to turn the tables upon you.

How not to "help" your prospective authors ...

1. Please don't say you want to read "something that will keep (you) up at night turning the pages". For Pete's own dear sake - you guys tell US ad infinitum to use specific, clear, pointed examples and language in pitching our work at you. Offer the same courtesy in kind; that would give it some depth and urgency. After all: how can you imagine I know what keeps you up at night? I just eliminated a query because I couldn't get a handle on the agent, thanks to communication just as vague as any poorly-constructed query letter they can ever have complained about. (See also: "I like ALL kinds of reading!" and "I never know what I am going to go for." Terribly helpful. I mean, again, I get it. But it's not precisely instructive either.)
2. Don't describe what interests you as "transformative historial fiction" ... If I've been instructed once, I've been instructed a hundred times now not to make up genres to describe my work. What in Maud's name is tranformative historical fiction? And - again - how is it you imagine we can get a handle on that, any better than y'all can understand made-up and crossbred "genres" which don't exist? Sure, if you say you like romantic historical fiction, that makes sense. But if you get schmoopy and bring an amorphous term like transformative in, I'm wondering if what you prefer is fantasy.
3. Please please DO tell us what you don't take. There are times that kind of bullet point helps clarify what you DO take, if "historical fiction" isn't addressed in some way in your blurbs, on your site, or even in your completely absent list of actual works under representation.
4. Please put your list of actual works under representation SOMEWHERE we can access it. If you can't bear to do so on your own actual site (it is astounding to me how many agencies won't do this), then let QueryTracker have a shot. Please? I know it just coddles us spoiled authors, but gravy on gravel, people: it serves you, too, actually.
5. And, yes - do please address how you personally define the genres you cover. We all know they are bludgeons, not scimitars, and I don't want to waste your time or mine shilling my fairly muscular work at you if you prefer heaving bodices and lots of candlelight to axes and intricate religious politics. I can take my cues if your website is pink and all images soft-focused, but not everyone is that on-the-nose in their electronic aesthetic.
6. And building from that point: consider web design. I've gotten a migraine every query-night since last February visiting agency pages, and some take a LONG time to (a) navigate, and/or (b) load. I want to know your library, and I *need* to "meet" your agents, but I don't care about all the scrolling you have never heard people hate to do (the studies on this date back to the nineties, people; and even I am aware of them). And, as much as I love nifty graphics, if they bounce and swoon to the point I can't control or get beyond them you're wasting my time as much as any slush pile so famously wastes yours. Simple is perfectly fine. There's no taint nor shame in having a sensibly designed site; even if it's pink and loaded with clip-art of Fabio. Like your writers' pitches are - if the content is no good, the showy Flash won't help me *or* you - and if it is good, you don't even need all the Fancy-Fancy. Just sayin'.

Off for a few more fistfuls of Advil.

In conclusion - either "physician, heal thyself" or "practice what you preach", depending upon your preference for medical or religion-themed metaphor.

Sheesh.