[NickSpalding]

Posted this over at Kindle Boards, thought you guys might have an opinion too:

Last night I had a curry with a few people, one of whom is a fellow author (and annoyingly one more talented than me, probably). We got to talking about what he was writing currently and he told me he'd just started sending his freshest manuscript out to agents.

One particular agent on their website made the claim that they were reading new author's work, and encouraged authors to send them their samples and synopsis - by email. My mate did this, as his book was the type of thing they agency was looking for.

He also made sure his email had a read receipt attached...

Two weeks later he got a read receipt at 15.00 hours precisely.

...He got a rejection email from the agency at 15.02 hours.

So they hadn't even bothered looking at his submission, despite claiming to be happy to read them.

He did point out that it looked like the submission had only been looked at by an assistant...and not an actual agent, which sounds about right.

Sigh.

It's this kind of attitude (completely unsurprising, but sad nonetheless) that really puts anyone off bothering to submit their work.