wary...

Well, as I count down the days left in my summer break (6 by my count) I swooped by my apartment (I am house/dog sitting out in suburbia right now) to pick up my mail.

In my mail was the submission paperwork for one of the agencies that requested my Pillow Queen screenplay.

This agency looks professional enough; they enclosed (as all agencies worth their mettle should) a list of recent sales, significant clients and pet projects they have in the works.

The down side?

The paperwork they sent me is wrought with mechanical errors.

Parenthetical sentence-ending punctation.

One instance of a non-capitalized word at the beginning of a sentence.

And lots of awkward phrasing.

I don't know.

It makes me wary.

You'd think a literary agency would have better editorial skills and would more carefully prepare their materials.

Furthermore, there's the fact that they charge a "processing fee" of $35.

Now, I've heard that any agency that charges a "reading fee" is shady.

However, they state, emphatically, that this is not a reading fee.

They claim it is to fund a stipend they offer to members of their "agent mentoring program".

Furthermore, they insist that writers not send their submissions with "metered mail" (I'm assuming that means packages with delivery confirmation). They suggest that, if we want confirmation of acceptance, that we enclose a self-address, stamped post-card for them to return to us once the package has been received.

On the other hand, the agency's credentials look solid enough and their protocol for considering submissions (which they described in their letter) sound professional and valid.

'Course, they could be bullshitting.

What they require is this:

- signed submission release form (standard)
- self-addressed stamped envelope for return of materials (this is also standard, but it doesn't look like they offer the option of designating your materials as "disposable"... Which is preferable for me, rather than buying a new over-sized mailing envelope and paying twice for postage, just so they can (potentially) send back my rejected script...)
- A one-page synopsis (standard)
- The first fifty pages of my script (standard)
- That I write "Requested" on the package I send them (also standard, but something I didn't know until I looked into submission practices last year)
- A copy of my initial query letter (semi-standard... I've had agencies ask me for that before)

Anyhow, they say that they are primarily a literary agency, but that they take on "selective" screenwriters and that they specialize in works with film adaptation potential. Apparently, they sold a book of theirs to Showtime as a series.

I don't know... here goes nothing...

Soon I can begin submitting Urban Prairie to literary agents, which (strange as it may sound) is a hell of a lot less frustrating and less pretentious than submitting scripts to film agents.
Novelists can (and do) live anywhere.
Literary Agents (I've found) are a lot more diplomatic towards writers living in the "fly-over states" (man I hate that fuckin' pretentious, elitist phrase).

So it goes...