Query Faux Pas

Okay, so I've hired yet another assistant to go through the snail mail, because it's just impossible to catch up.

Her first day on the job, she opens a letter from an author who complains that he sent me a query 9 months ago and didn't get a response, and a follow-up letter 5 months later and now. No query enclosed, no SASE, no email address and no phone number, yet he wonders why he doesn't get a response. It's surreal.

Another prospective author sent flowers during the holidays with only a piece of poetry as the card. No name, address or even reference to his work. I thought they were from an author for whom I had just closed a deal, but didn't say anything. I was waiting for him to say, "Did you get the flowers?" because the note was so cryptic. So, in the pile of April snailmail, I got a letter saying that the author was perplexed that I had never even given him the courtesy of thanking him for the flowers, and that he was still waiting for my reaction to his work. At least this indignant author included an email address, so I wrote to him telling him that I had no idea who has sent the flowers, but that I did thank him, and he should send an email query. Nothing yet.

Another author sent his email pitch to every agent's email address he could find. I replied by telling him it was considered bad form to mass email agents. He wrote back and said he considered it bad form to get impersonal form rejection letters from agents.

You just can't win.