I will never forget how, after Mike Brown was murdered like 10 mins from my house, white people were like "well actually" and protestors were being hit police abuse daily and Palestinians on here were threading to anyone they could find what to do
Authors, I swear to you that no reputable agent would ask for you to decide on rep within 24 hours. I promise you this times a MILLION. Please take care of yourselves, feel free to push back or just walk away.
Scholastic could have just left Maggie and her book alone, never made that offer. The fact that they did, and demanded that of her in exchange....I just don't think I can say how wrong that is.
I don't think any Zionists are feeling any sort of chill in publishing. Not when I had to pull a submission from an editor on here liking tweets about Palestinian children being murdered that said, literally said, those children are Hamas.
Like???
BECKY IF YOU SEE THIS I AM A LITERARY AGENT I WOULD HAPPILY REPRESENT YOU AND THIS BOOK AS WELL AS ANY OTHER BOOK YOU MAY WANT TO WRITE ALSO I AM FROM ST. LOUIS TOO
The letter from agents supporting
@hcpunion
and committing to withholding new subs during the strike was sent off this AM. It can be viewed in its entirety, with more than 160 signatures here:
Something for querying authors to think about: once you're sure your book is ready to be agented, do yourself and your future agent a huge favor by making sure you're ready too.
I'm a firm believer that sometimes all we can do as people is apologize and do better next time but white people are like....in an alternate reality?? How are you making slavery jokes??? Right now??? When black people are being killed in the street? What's wrong with you????
Listen. If you're upset that someone else is deciding whether or not your book is sellable, or publishable, or whatever else, traditional publishing is not for you. Someone else is always making the decision. It's never gonna be you, or your agent, or your editor deciding that.
Oh no she was not prepared for this question which really makes me think she hasn't given it a single solitary thought and figured no one would notice she just stopped talking like that
If people in publishing want more black people working for them, I'm looking for remote editorial work in children's and YA publishing. I'm a freelance editor, have worked with
@PageStreetKids
(among other places) and was a mentor in
@PitchWars
. DM with opportunities or questions
I'm now open for queries! You can find what I'm looking for here but don't be discouraged if you don't see your project perfectly described. If you think I'd like it, send your query in the body of an email to chelseaquery
@ktliterary
.com
Something I hate and am thinking about today: agencies where, should an agent want to leave, said agent has to forfeit all their clients and their commissions and start all over.
I hate this.
Me: mom did I tell you I sold a client's book?
Mom: for how much
Me: *tells her* (and do note, it is actually a REALLY good amount for publishing lol)
Mom: ....
Mom: so where are the million dollar book deals?
😭😭😭
A new trailer for ‘WORK IT’ has been officially released.
Sabrina Carpenter, Liza Koshy, Keiynan Lonsdale and Jordan Fisher, will star in the film.
The film will release on Netflix on. August 7.
This is a tweet for people thinking of getting into agenting. It wouldn't have deterred me but it would have helped to know.
I'm a new agent (I'm also Black, a woman, and I'm sure those things play their part) and basically... people don't mind treating us poorly.
If you didn't like PRH buying S&S, buckle up, b/c HC buying S&S is so. much. worse. Unlike PRH (wherein P & RH CAN bid against one another to buy a book, HC swallows the pub and it becomes just another HC imprint (see HMH). Imprints are NOT ALLOWED to bid against each other. 1/
Your agent (whose commission was literally pennies) leaving because of health problems and promising to help you is not the same as being dropped with no support on a Friday night because your agent got fired just so you know. So let's not conflate the two.
uh maybe someone has pointed this out already, but every single author on the young adult nytimes best seller list this week is white. like every single one
I'm so happy for her but every time I hear someone is having twins I think about how they probably thought they were only having one and then the doctor was like "ACTUALLY"
Thank you everyone for your congratulations! So exciting not to be an intern anymore! I'm not open for queries currently but when I am you will know because you will hear me screaming about it wherever you are.
@ChelseaBigBang
Hello, I wonder if I could ask you to confirm, please, whether or not you would represent any writers that publicly hold the view that sex matters and that human beings cannot change sex? Thank you.
The cognitive fucking dissonance between you gleefully advocating for more kids to be murdered and then wanna talk about "oh and people are being mean to me about it can you believe"
Look. A lot of people don't actually like literary agents or the idea of having one. That's fine. You don't need one to publish. You need one to traditionally publish, but that may not be the path for you if you innately believe all agents are out to harm you and your career.
So I've been an agent for over a month now. I have two clients. And the emails I have sent in this brief period of time outnumber all the emails I have sent in my entire life.
Me to clients: patience is just so important because publishing is so incredibly slow and it's frustrating but we just have to be chill
Also me: *refreshes email every 20 minutes*
Since HC is doubling down, casual reminder that this letter is still open for signatures from agents who are willing to commit to not subbing new projects to HC during the strike
The letter from agents supporting
@hcpunion
and committing to withholding new subs during the strike was sent off this AM. It can be viewed in its entirety, with more than 160 signatures here:
George Floyd didn't sacrifice anything, Derek Chauvin took it from him. George was not a martyr nor did he want to die so society could better itself in his name. Please fuck all the way off
Before you respond to this tweet know it costs $50 per tweet to argue with me
If you want an agent who doesn't like your book that's fine, there ARE agents who do that when they know it will sell. They will also yeet you the second a book shows up they don't like and can't sell.
@KamalaHarris
You and
@JoeBiden
need to ask Rihanna for some advice and go to the GSA and tell her to pay you. This is ridiculous. Taxpayers have already funded this transition, you need to demand the GSA do her job rather than asking us to make up for it.
I mean...whatever it takes to stop this shit but 30k people have been murdered by Israel and a lot of them were fathers too. I know it doesn't hit the same for WashPo because they were brown but they deserved to live too.
ohh they're doing the "father and military veteran" kind of headline about one of the victims now? israel really must have pushed the envelope a bit too hard here
GOP TX Rep Chip Roy: “The metal detector policy for the House floor is unnecessary, unconstitutional, and endangers members. I did not comply tonight. I will not comply in the future.”
I do think it is a very interesting fumble on Taylor's part that, after years of being so careful and so calculated, that she messed up by dating this perfectly unimpressive dude.
there’s something to be said about how it took taylor swift dating an unabashed bigot for a large segment of her fanbase to ask themselves if she’s as good of a person as she has led *them* to believe that she is, despite what others have been saying for years.
Please do not lump Cardigan in with other agents. Not saying there aren't shitty agents out there but Cardigan was uniquely horrid both to authors and agents and no reasonable agent who had seen or been on the receiving end of their behavior took them seriously as anything.
The cops literally arrested a black reporter for doing his job and still haven't managed to arrest the officers who killed George Floyd when the whole world saw them murder him.
Hi
#MoodPitch
, I'm coming in late today but if I like your pitch and you think we'd be a good fit you can submit the first 50 pages and a complete synopsis at this link:
The people being like "it felt like something was off with JM" are very weird. You don't actually know the man, you lose nothing by admitting that you didn't know he was violent.
I'm so excited to announce my new client, the incredibly cool
@darusha
(!!!) I'm so excited to be working with them on their smart sci-fi novella, a queer Shakespeare retelling called HAMLET, PRINCE OF ROBOTS.
We are approaching 125 literary agents who are committed to excluding HC from our sub lists while the strike is ongoing. If you're an agent wanting to join us, read and sign at the link below!
Agents! We are nearing 100 of us who have committed to not sending new submissions to HC during the strike. I KNOW we will break 100 today (who will the 100th signer be????), but I want to see how high we can go. If you can sign DO sign and share:
Agent friends! If you are willing to commit to not sending new subs to HC while the strike is ongoing please join me and the rest of
@ktliterary
in signing this letter!
I quit the Store today. Couldn't do it anymore. I've never been so miserable in a job and I have been MISERABLE in many jobs. Pray for me because who knows what I'll do now.
I have stats!
I got about 3088 queries (I didn't count the ones I got via email, but it wasn't very many, maybe 50ish). This includes things I requested via pitch contests, etc.
I requested to read more of an even 100.
I made 16 offers of rep. Signed 9 new clients.
I feel like I'm going crazy because people in the military are applauded for being willing to die for this country all the time but when they're willing to die in protest of our country, suddenly it's mental illness.
I just applied to a job that could literally change my life and also be very very nice so PLEASE PLEASE send me all your good vibes, well wishes, prayers etc because I WANT IT.
Nothing makes HC's position more nakedly money hungry than the fact that they're still talking about buying S&S when they're allegedly too poor to increase annual wages by 5k
We are in desperate need of more unions. The NYT piece on the
@hcpunion
strike focused on the demand to raise the salary floor from 45 to 50k, but let’s talk instead about the $2 BILLION HarperCollins profited last year, and the fact that the union is asking for $1 million total
Hello
#PitDark
if I ❤️ your pitch and you think we'd be a good fit, you can submit your query, first 50 pages, and complete synopsis at the below link. Good luck everyone!
Honestly some of you are legitimately cruel. Regardless of what I do or say on here, I never do it with it with cruelty or even the intent to be mean. So many of you think you're holding people "accountable" and really all you're doing is giving yourself permission to be hateful
Everyone finally talking plain about someone who openly harassed multiple colleagues off this app (and tried to do it to me but I'm sick and can't quit this place) like....
A white person telling me to consider that people are marginalized is absolutely insane to me. Please do not do this in my mentions ever again. I am so serious.
Y'all gotta stop paying attention to whoever saying whatever just because they're agented. They just have an agent. They aren't smarter than you or magically know everything about the pub industry. Keep this in mind when you see ppl talmbout red flags and "real" issues.