I've been thinking about yesterday's #queryfail -- agents posting and sometimes snarking on choice lines from bad queries. (I caught on very late last night, and I use Twitter quite regularly. That's the kind of learning curve that's involved with Twitter, and one of the reasons it can be a real lightning rod sometimes.) Quite predictably, today there's been some backlash.
I thought #queryfail was hilarious. But the anonymous post at 1:21 PM yesterday here makes an absolutely excellent point. A point that's even more relevant BECAUSE it's anonymous.
As with most humor, #queryfail doesn't represent a balanced transaction.
No matter how informative #queryfail is, no matter how much some writers really DO need to do their research and use spellcheck? Acts of regular blogging and/or twittering don't affect the balance of power between those who submit, and those who accept. Whatever else has changed since we all got glued to the WWW in 1993, that basic transaction hasn't.
If a group of writers chose to have an #agentfail day, even if the guilty were depicted at the same level of anonymity? The consequences for the writers would be dramatically different. I've only been an editor for about three months, and already I've had some chances to see that for myself.
So as much as I did find it amusing and now am going to be a joykilling asshole? #queryfail was a little like watching the cool kids in the cafeteria trip the kids who are going to still be living in their parents' basements when they're 40. Is there a point, besides that it's funny? Really?
Yes, there was a point. Those willing to look for it found it.
Your comparison about an #agentfail day doesn't work: what do agents need to learn from writers? Are agents hurting for writers to query them? Do they need to cater to us? The purpose of an #agentfail day would be merely to whine (which happens, quite often).
The purpose of #queryfail was to show the writers what comes through an agent's inbox; we learned how the agents react to these things. Writers asked questions to get clarification on some of the posts, and the agents answered, often giving their personal preference -- invaluable information if a writer plans on querying that agent in the future.
To take your cool-kids-in-the-cafeteria analogy, this was the cool kids showing the uncool kids what was wrong with their wardrobe and what they needed to change in order to look more like the cool kids. Sure, not the sweetest warm-fuzzies-puppies-and-rainbows event in the world, but we uncool kids asked for the mentoring session.
Posted by: Criss | March 11, 2009 at 04:35 PM
I was a bit surprised my post went this long without a response, even though I tried very hard to avoid OH NOES TEH POOR WRITERZ. So hello, and thanks for stopping by.
If #queryfail provided individualized access to agents that isn't normally available -- I don't subscribe to @ returns because then I'd have to reload every 30 seconds -- then I retract any inference I made about its inherent uselessness. But I have to continue to disagree with you about the uselessness of an #agentfail. Anonymous, linked in my post, provides some very reasonable examples of potential #agentfail entries. Why does the learning street only run one way? Perhaps #agentfail would not be referring to the agents who are well-liked in the Twitter universe, but is anyone saying #queryfail refers to the writers who are competent?
The uncool kids asked for #queryfail? If so, I'd like to see a link to that effect -- I haven't yet. And something tells me that you aren't an uncool #queryfail kid. Your comment here suggests you can write your way out of a paper bag, and I don't remember seeing much of that the other day.
Posted by: Erin | March 11, 2009 at 05:01 PM