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Sunday, July 1, 2007

The Betsy Lerner Not-So-Smooth Hand-Off




Here's a funny exchange. It goes like this:
  • Betsy Lerner gets a copy of my query and accidentally sends a note to me that she meant to send to her colleague. "Erin: Do you have any interest in this writer? B"
  • I write her back and say: Oops..I think you meant to send this to Erin.
  • Betsy Lerner writes back to me and says: "Indeed! Oops. And I'm sorry. I'm very tired and your energy struck me as something that my colleague Erin might like--So with your permission and now knowledge--I'll forward it to her...Betsy"
Though "Do you have any interest" is hardly an endorsement, it could have been much worse. I guess it's kind of a passive rejection because I think BL didn't have any interest.  Oh well. 

Update:  I have recently had a much worse email accident, handled gracefully by the unintended recipient of my message, an editor of journal publishing an essay of mine.  We are all susceptible...I think BL handled it nicely.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love your blog.
But here's the thing. Have you considered the consequence of publicizing rejections? What will happen when agents have their meanness exposed? Will they feel compelled to send rejections with disappearing ink so that no one can scan them in and publicize them? Perhaps we will look back on these times wistfully.

Yours in solidarity,

Unknown said...

This is the major downfall of email. I've done this a few times myself but I was lucky and didn't make any comments about how stupid the client was! WHEW!

Saw your comment over at Passive Aggressive so I thought I'd stop by!

Writer, Rejected said...

I can barely make it through a day without the passive aggressive blog. It's a great blog!