On bad timing - Bologna

It seems that people don't expect you to be an expert in the Sitz im Leben* of the whole literary/publishing world when you're just starting out, which is a relief.  Obviously, if you're looking for an agent (as I am), then you might want to do things like study their submission guidelines**, and read the obvious canonical works (the most obvious one), but you can't be expected to know all the ins and outs.  I think that agents will cut people a bit of slack.  Well, I really hope they will.

There are, however, some huge pieces of misfortune that can befall you if you don't know some of the basics.  And I've just fallen into one of them.  As any new author would, I'm very keen to find out whether I can find representation and to get feedback on my efforts (which I have, natch, submitted according to the relevant agents' guidelines).  I realise that despite my sparkling covering letter and fascinatingly revealed personality, it may take a while for them to get round to reading my 2 chapters/3 chapters/first 20 pages/first 10 pages [delete as applicable].  I even realise that 6 weeks is pretty much the standard time that I should have to wait.  What I didn't appreciate was that I was sending out my lovingly (and painstakingly) crafted submissions just before the Bologna Children's Book Fair.

"But it's only 4 days long!" you cry.

"That's a working week or more including travel," I reply.  "And there's the week beforehand for preparation, and the week before that when they'll be ignoring anything new that's come in because they know that they've got a week of preparation due.  And after the week of the Book Fair (if my experience of conferences and trade fairs is anything to go by***), there will be several days required for recovery.  And the wine over in Italy is generally more than passable.  And then at least a week to catch up on all the important things that didn't get done at the book fair.  And then another week for them to read the manuscripts that they got from the many authors they met at the conference****."  And that's lots of weeks.  I can't be bothered to count them, partly because I've been exaggerating for dramatic effect, but it feels like I've made a newbie mistake here, and I probably won't hear back from any of them before sometime in July.  Next year.*****

Heigh-ho.



* Yes, I'm going out of my way to be somewhat pretentious here, and I'm also aware that it's not really the right phrase, but I nearly wrote Weltschmerz instead, so it could have gone a whole lot worse.

** Search online for using terms like "agent" "submission guidelines" and "ignore" if you don't believe me.

*** As I used to work for an academic publisher, I'm going to pretend that the children's book fair scene is similar, but it could be even more extreme.

**** There may be none, but I'm fearing the worst now.

***** I should point out that one agent, who shall remain nameless but is, in my brief contact with her, clearly brilliant and generally perfect in all aspects of her personality, contacted me to suggest that I re-sent****** the submission after the Book Fair was over, because she was very busy, and was having IT problems.  I salute you.

****** I first wrote this as "resent the submission", which made the whole sentence read rather differently.  See - re-reading your work is useful.