Pitch problems

[igenlode]

All the material available on the Internet emphasises the importance of addressing your 'book pitch' to a individual named literary agent; "no Dear Sir/Madams please, they go in the bin", one agent says adamantly.

But the actual agencies I'm looking at have a single submissions@agency address for all the agents working there -- the first one I emailed gave specific instructions to put the name of the person you were trying to contact in the title of the email, but the current one doesn't say anything of the sort (on the contrary, it says "If you would like *us* to consider your manuscript, please send *us* the following"). So while I do have an individual agent in mind, I'm not at all clear that I'm supposed to be the one picking and choosing in advance, as opposed to them deciding who, if anybody, might have any interest in my project... which means I either give offence by presuming to say whom I am and am not prepared to deal with, or by failing as a result to address a specific partner by name :-(
(And to be honest, all the people in the London office, apart from the one specialising in Japanese literature, sound like a possible potential fit anyway, even though I was only given the one name as "actively seeking to expand their client list"...)

In the (geeky) circles I move in, you don't normally put "Dear So and So" at the top of an email message in any case, any more than you put the date or your street address -- but I don't have any experience of business emails :-(

Comments

[watervole]

I'd go for the individual.

[igenlode]

So presumably an added For Attention Of in the title as well as the Dear So & So at the top of the text...
This page https://literary-agents.com/get-a-literary-agent/how-to-format-an-email-query-for-literary-agents/ suggests putting the genre in as well ("The genre lets the literary agency instantly know who the email needs to be forwarded to, if it’s not a one man (or woman) operation") and the agency's own site doesn't give any guidelines as to what format they want -- one is assumed to know :-(

[watervole]

For attention of makes sense.

[paserbyp]

I don’t get it. Why agent don’t have personal e-mail?

[igenlode]

I'm sure they do; there is a separate address to use if you want to apply for work experience, or if you have a general enquiry to make, and no doubt individual agents have their own personal email addresses which their clients can use to communicate with them directly.

It's just that the agency wants all unsolicited manuscript submissions to go to the same place -- a place separate from the traffic they actually *need* to read, presumably, so that it doesn't clog up the inbox and prevent more important messages from being seen ;-)
(In other words, the 'slush pile' on which physical manuscripts used to be dumped on arrival...)

[paserbyp]

So, you will send directly to agent’s e-mail and CCing to the agency e-mail?

[igenlode]

No, they don't give you the agents' individual email addresses on the website, and they certainly don't want you to use them -- even if you could guess what they are -- to send submissions.

This agency wants all the unpublished writers' submissions to go to the single email address which they specify for that purpose, and so did the previous agency I tried -- hence my problem in reconciling this with the more general advice on the Web about 'how to submit a manuscript to an agent', which always tells you that you are going to get rejected if you do not name an individual agent at the top of your email :-(

[paserbyp]

In this case send directly to agency e-mail and Ccing or Bccing to the agent’s e-mail?

[igenlode]

They don't tell you the agent's personal e-mail.
Presumably you only learn that information if the agent likes your manuscript and replies to you directly...

It's just a matter of whether it is good etiquette to put the name of an individual agent at the top of an e-mail which is being sent to a communal address or not.
watervole thinks it is, and she is probably right.

Request

[paserbyp]

I'm collecting some prediction here: https://paserbyp.dreamwidth.org/837301.html

Could you make your own?

P.S. https://paserbyp.dreamwidth.org/837301.html

Re: Request

[igenlode]

I'm afraid I haven't been following the World Cup at all and don't even know which countries have qualified for entry this year; I could name some teams completely at random and hope that they were in the competition, but that wouldn't be much of a prediction...

Re: Request

[paserbyp]

You can choice between: England, France, Spain, Netherland, Brazil and Argentina. I doubt if anyone else have more chances…

Re: Request

[igenlode]

All right, off the top of my head: Brazil, the Netherlands, England and Argentina for the semi-finals. An all-South-American final, with Brazil playing Argentina, and Brazil win :-)

Re: Request

[paserbyp]

Could you please go to: https://paserbyp.dreamwidth.org/837301.html and post your prediction there and I’ll be back to you on July after final of World Cup?