..suck. No really, I’ve always thought so. Sting submissions are when a person or persons submits a purposefully fake submission in order to prove some point. The most famous is Atlanta Nights, a purposefully horrid, repetitive and nonsensical novel submitted to PublishAmerica to prove they’d publish any work sent to them. You’ve probably also heard about someone submitting a classic novel, critically acclaimed to “prove publishers suck”. (Okay, so maybe the suck is me paraphrasing, but that’s still the point.)
So what’s the problem? It all comes down to why you did it. Let’s break it down.
Case 1: Atlanta Nights
Why: Did it to prove PublishAmerica accepts everything.
The Problem: We already knew that. I mean, yeah in a way it’s funny, and you called them on their crap, and it’s become a legend in the online writing world. But now everyone else wants to do it at the drop of the hat. Also, we already knew PublishAmerica was like that. It’s like the local cops witnessing a guy standing on the street, dealing drugs on surveillance cameras for weeks, then setting up a sting with the sole purpose of catching him. You don’t need the sting. It’s a waste of effort.
Case 2: Disgruntled writer (or MFA student) send in Pride and Prejudice or another classic, even award winning novel published at least twenty years ago to a mess of agents to prove agents don’t know good literature anymore.
Why: There’s no pussyfooting around it, this comes off as a “They don’t see my genius so I’m going to prove they wouldn’t know good literature if it bit them on the ass”.
The Problem: There are so many and there is no way to tell which one the submission got rejected for.
1. In all the reports of this sort of thing published the “writer” sent out a huge mess of queries. NO details are ever given if they followed guidelines, or even bothered to query agents who handle the genre of book they were submitting.
2. Also, they don’t publish their query letter, so if it sucked they never even got their foot in the door.
3. Also, editors and agents don’t waste time with BS like this. They aren’t going to initiate a potential fight with a querier by pointing out their book is already published. They’ll just form reject it and hope the author figures it out on their own. Just because they didn’t say they regocnized it doesn’t mean they did.
4. Also agents and editors deal with “tricks” like this all the time. The old hair in the manuscript trick, the “turn a page upside down so you know they read it” trick, the textured/odd colored/scented paper to grab attention tricks, the print it and bind it so they know what it would look like as a finished book trick, the include a head shot trick, the slide the unasked for manuscript under the bathroom stall door trick…you get it. Every agent has been through these things and they know the best thing to do is to minimize the experience. If you don’t give the author a way to argue back, don’t argue back, don’t even acknowledge their idiocy then they get bored and wander off to fight some new windmills.
5. Readers want different books now. The kind of stories, the kind of topics, the kind of characters, even the form and language what is being published NOW is not the same as what was being published THEN. This doesn’t make the classic less good, it makes it not appropriate in the current publishing market, and you know what, LOTS of great books aren’t getting published because they aren’t right for the current publishing market.
Case #3: Sting submission to Harlequin/Dellarte
Why: Do it to see whether Harlequin is funneling people to Dellarte (Harlequin’s VERY expensive “self publishing” branch)
The Problem: Again, multiples.
1. You have no way of knowing whether the editors were in on the Dellarte decision or not. If they weren’t (which is very likely) you’ll be basing your information on a barely-related source, punishing someone who was likely horrified by the move not to mention wasting their time.
2. There are plenty of people who submit to Harlequin every day. Ask them to share their rejections with you.
3. Oh wait, there are communities, like you know, that massive, literate, very verbal romance community, that are already doing this.
4. Also see my reason for Case #2 because they apply, particularly the ones about editors knowing writers tricks and not responding to them to prevent drama.
5. Because this whole proposition is not about helping anyone, or stopping anything. It’s about the drama of Dellarte having died down and a bunch of people, who are not bad people and who don’t have bad intentions, wanting to kick it up (maybe to get a more satisfying conclusion than RWA’s backing down). It’s about Atlanta Nights being idolized and cool and you wanting to be a part of it.
Like arguing with editors, agents and reviewers this is an instance where the people doing sting submissions cannot escape the perception that they’re just bitter and wasting their time trying to prove point that doesn’t need to be proven. I just don’t see the point in wasting your time and the editor’s time just to say “Haha I’m right!”
Anyone else?
