I've known since last year that Robert Barnett was Sarah Palin's "literary agent". Actually, Barnett's not a fulltime literary agent. He's an attorney by trade at the white shoe firm of Williams & Connolly LLP. When the opportunity presents itself, he'll choose to represent someone who isn't actually a writer and has to depend on a ghost writer to keep from sounding like a complete fucking idiot. Fed up to here with disrespect and ignorance from asshole, self-absorbed literary agents, I decided to pitch my novel The Toy Cop to Barnett yesterday. What follows is my letter, reproduced word-for-word (minus the .jpeg).
Williams & Connolly LLP
725 Twelfth Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005
725 Twelfth Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005
Dear Mr. Barnett:
We’ve both been
around long enough to know how the game is played. And I can appreciate that.
Four and a half
years ago, America and its John Birch Society/KKK/Aryan Supremacy demographic
fell in love with a sneering cheerleader out of Wasilla, Alaska who tapped into
their racist fears and secessionist desires and validated them at a time when
they needed validation the most. Then they, inexplicably, stayed in love with
her even after her burning blimps of two “bestsellers”, a reality TV series in
which Daddy had to load her gun for her and a Fox “News” stint that just ended
rather ignominiously.
In you stepped
into the political and personal quagmire that was her previously (and justly)
obscure life and career and sold the First North American Rights for her
ghost-written Going Vague or whatever
it was called. I don’t know if you did the same for her when the long-awaited
followup came out just two months in advance of the printing of the “Bargain!
$1.99!” stickers that would be slapped on it in WalMart’s and Osco’s bargain
bins.
But, either way,
I can appreciate you stepping into the breach between good and common sense and
putting Sarah’s puss on two books because you, as with any fulltime literary
agent would, struck while the iron was hot. This is, after all, America, the
rib-thumping, Good Ole’ Boy capitol of Capitalism.
So here we are,
four and a half years after she stumbled on the American scene like Kramer in a
typical Seinfeld episode. You’re no doubt hundreds of thousands of dollars
richer, she’s millions richer and Threshold, her first publisher, is many more millions
richer. Going Rogue became a
bestseller only because her political action committee, SarahPAC, bought up
69,000 copies to give away or sell at Bircher and birther conventions.
Individually, it didn’t sell nearly as many copies as you and her publisher
would prefer to think. But I’m a political blogger and a novelist of some
modest brilliance and I read and write about these things for a living.
America is now
just waking up and rubbing its eyes from this latest slumber and beginning to
wonder what in the world they saw in this fantastically insane and hateful woman
who’s like a chapter of the DSM V come to life. I’m assuming you’re
professional enough to have moved on and don’t care one bit at how much you,
Caribou Barbie or Threshold Editions had cattle-prodded our nation’s literacy
IQ even further below than the drooling, foaming-at-the-corner-of-the-mouth
level in which you’d all found it (as proof of this, look at the new flavors of
the day in the person of Grammy-goer Lena Dunham and the self-published author
of 50 Shades of Gray, whatever her
name is, which are apparently doing what Palin had done three years ago:
Perpetuating hateful and self-destructive stereotypes and getting paid well for
it.).
But just in case
you’re wondering, as are so many us, if maybe you should’ve taken a pass on
Palin and let some other attorney or a real literary agent suffer the pre-emptive
stigma of being the one responsible for inflicting Going Rogue on an unsuspecting reading public, in case you’re in even
the slightest need of some professional redemption, allow me to offer you THE
TOY COP.
This is a
170,000+ word novel that took me close to 14 years to write and revise.
Considering I had an agent back in the mid-late 90’s to rep my first novel (a
hideously-executed sci fi adventure about Jack the Ripper, written at a time
when I was ignorant about the very rudiments of effective and compelling
storytelling), it only stands to reason that now, at age 54, I’ve only gotten
better as a novelist as well as infinitely more pragmatic about the realities
of modern-day publishing.
Yet trying to
find a literary agent nowadays is like looking for a unicorn in a
slaughterhouse. This is why I’m approaching you with this. You’re an attorney
by trade who only dabbles in literary representation on the side when
opportunity meets opportunism. I’ve had my fill of getting form rejection
letters from flunkies of agents whom I’d directly written and getting rude
silences even when providing quality material and obeying submission guidelines
to the letter. Perhaps you haven’t been around writers and publishers so long
that you’ve been jaded as all other agents have. For my part, I’m tired of the
disrespect to my talent, time and efforts. There is absolutely no reason why a
writer of my talent shouldn’t be put between covers, especially when one
considers 90% of published books lose money. Mergers such as the one between
Random and Penguin are making it even harder for agents to sell properties,
readers to get a varied menu of offerings and authors to find placements. This
is why self-publishing is taking off like a Roman candle.
So that’s why I’m
betting on you. THE TOY COP is a high concept, white knuckle thriller that
benefited from the wisdom of former MA Governor Paul Cellucci and ex FBI crisis
negotiator Fred Lanceley as well as invaluable input from several experts in
their respective fields. If my first, horrible, novel could get me an honest
literary agent in 1996 (she called my house begging to sign me) when I could
barely write a coherent grocery list, consider how brilliant THE TOY COP is, a
novel that took me half a generation to write with the wisdom accrued since I
first snagged an agent.
Perhaps a man of
your level of accomplishment has his mail screened for him by flunkies of his
own and perhaps this will go unread. Still, I have to try something. I have a greater
instinct for publicity than a talent for it and my own marketing platform is
simply not pushing sales. In fact, I haven’t sold a copy of TTC either on
Kindle or Create Space in a couple of months. Trying to sell even well-written
books on the internet if you’re not a celebrity or have a professional
apparatus working for you is like pouring vials of ambergris into a sand dune
or tossing a ball of lint down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.
I’ve had it with
agents and I’m tired of publishers telling me I need an agent in order to be
even considered. This current business model is thoroughly rotten, corrupt,
based on nothing but money and is untenable. The nonsustainability is proven by
the mere fact that for the first time in history more books are sold
electronically and by independent authors than traditional dead tree
publishers.
Just do yourself
a favor. Read even just a chapter or two of TTC. Look at the synopsis I’ve
provided below then tell me I’m not the real thing. It’s not a political novel
although there are political and legal elements that would relate to your
experience as a legislative assistant and federal law clerk. Over the course of
14 years, the writing’s been sanded down to a slick finish and the research
impeccable. It’s quite possibly the only novel ever written that actually gets
federal-level crisis negotiation correct.
It’s going for $8
and change on Create Space but I’m sending you a free copy (the Create Space version
I used for the galleys) via Word 7 attachment. Just read even a few chapters
then, if you wish, keep reading until the harrowing end. And, if you do that
and agree with my assessment of its merits, maybe we can do business together.
Sincerely,
Robert Crawford
No comments:
Post a Comment