An Agent Agent? Just Say No

Earlier this week I read an enlightening post at Jennifer Represents, the blog of literary agent Jennifer Laughran. In this particular entry, Jennifer posts a great mock conversation with her and an agent agent (which I won't reproduce her but I urge you to click the above link to read the entry), as well as the following, which I've included here to explain what an agent agent is:

Much more often -- every couple of weeks at least -- I get the same basic thing but in email form:

Subject Line: AUTHOR REFERRAL!

Hi Agent, I'm Random McNoname, and I'm writing to reffer [sic] my client Author Sapsucker to you. Sapsucker has a pHd in Neurocathology [sic] and 78 followers on twitter so he's the real deal. The manuscript is attached, I look forward to hearing from you by next week.

If you're not quite following, this is the gist: Jennifer is an agent. Authors need agents to send their manuscripts to publishing companies that won't deal with unsolicited submissions. Agents are easy to get hold of - they have to be, because their livelihood depends entirely on having authors to represent. Somewhere along the line, deceitful cunning people have created a new job, that of the agent agent - an agent that an author pays to find them an agent for their book. As if getting published wasn't hard enough...

Jennifer further explains:

These are what I call "agent-agents" or third-party queriers. They convince authors that their "services" are necessary to query (aka spam) literary agents*. Authors who are totally new and/or desperate will take the bait and pay, in the hopes that it will give them a leg up on the competition. 

But it won't give a leg up on the competition, all it will do is frustrate or anger the agent, cost the author a lot of money, and all but guarantee their work is rejected on the basis that the agent agent is causing problems. The agent agent works on the premise of 'if you throw enough mud at a wall, some of it will stick' i.e. hit up enough agents and one may show interest. As such, they don't take the time to research each individual agent and find out what books or categories they represent; after all, a rejection doesn't matter to them, it matters to the author, so they need no qualms about accuracy. Spamming an agent is the quickest way I can think of to alienate an agent - and the very last thing any author wants to do is alienate agents. If they remember the title of the author or the book, that can haunt the writer if they approach the agent directly after ditching the agent agent - we all make mistakes and act in ignorance, but agents can afford to be picky about who they represent and who is going to want to recommend someone who doesn't do basic research into the appropriate steps to take?

Remember, budding authors, agents represent authors. By virtue of that fact, they need to hear from you, get to know you, and communicate with you and you alone. Querying is a step that authors need to take for themselves, and authors are already being represented - by their books.

Querying can be time consuming and tedious, but it isn't hard. It's made much easier by agents, because they post visibly on their websites how to approach them and clear instructions on what to include with a query. Paying someone else to do that for you isn't just expensive, it's alienating. 

Christmas Inspiration

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The answer is always yes.

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Writing a Book With Dictation Software

In simpler times (last year) the thought of writing a book through talking had never occurred to me. Not that I didn't think it was against a writer's ethics, it just didn't enter my mind. Then the Day of Change came: through editing a client's book, I found her mentor's book writing how-to guide, in which he recommends writing a book through dictation. It seemed like a good idea to me to incorporate a dictation program into my suite of software used for work, and I obtained a copy of Dragon, which is what I gather to be the most popular and feature-rich dictation program out there.

Before going any further, I'll admit that I didn't get around to writing a book with Dragon. I didn't even write a letter with it. I learned shortly after installing it that I think and write much faster through my hands than my mouth - meaning dictation software just slows me down. Colour me crazy if necessary, but the words flow much easier when I'm not thinking about them, and verbalising everything required definite thinking.

That being said, I understand that there are people out there who would prefer to use a dictation program to get their words done - and if I ever break my hands or find my hands too cold to type, I'll be doing the same.

So, if you're wondering if Dragon is worth the money, and you're sure you'll use it, I can confidently say it is worth the money, in the sense that it is excellent at what it does. It has a superb training section where it gets to learn your voice and how you pronounce certain words, minimising the chances of typos. It also can control your entire computer, from opening programs to shutting down, with Dragon, you won't need to touch your keyboard again (so extreme germophobes may also be interested in a copy).

Dragon also has mobile apps, so you can record your thoughts on the go and then sync it with the computer version later. The usefulness of that is without question - if you get an idea as you're drifting off to sleep or while cooking dinner, you can get it noted without having to write or go to the computer.

Dragon also allows editing, so you can tell it where to place the cursor and then input new words, or delete as necessary.

Dragon's downside is the price: coming in at £149, it's on the steep side for casual users. If you're not interested in controlling your whole computer with your voice, it may be worth exploring other options.

If you're a Mac user, you can stop looking straight away. Mavericks, the latest system update, improves the native dictation ability tremendously. You can now create entire documents with your voice, using a hotkey command (by default you active Dictation by double tapping the Fn key, but this is configurable in System Preferences). The program understands commands like 'New paragraph' and gets to know your voice to improve accuracy. In my own testing of this, it works very well - certainly good enough to not require spending money on a different program.

The downside of course is there are no apps that sync to it from on the go, but that's not necessarily a problem - you can use Evernote to sync between mobile and desktop, or create notes using voice commands on your phone and copy them to the computer later.

Is Writing a Book This Way Possible?

Absolutely. Creating any document via dictation is a simple process, and certainly one I'd use if it wasn't considerably faster for me to type. The software mentioned here are both able to interpret words properly and understand formatting and editing commands, which makes writing part or all of any document very simple indeed.