This isn’t an expanding business practice, I hope

This isn’t an industry trend, I hope, it’s just extreme but individual rudeness: Silence: The New Rejection That’s Expanding in Insidious Ways

The reason this is ridiculous rather than insidious:

But what concerns me is that the “Silence means no” practice is expanding in insidious ways.

In the past few months, two of my author clients were met with silence after submitting projects to agents—despite both agents having expressed strong interest and inviting the submission. There was not even an acknowledgment to the writer that the submission had been received. Polite follow-up queries by the authors several weeks later asking for confirmation of receipt were also met with silence.

That’s ridiculous.

Tolerable reasons for this kind of silence:

A) Agent is dead.

B) Agent is in the hospital.

C) Agent’s close relative is in the hospital.

D) There’s been a zombie apocalypse and civilization has disappeared.

That’s it. That’s all the reasons I can think of that would excuse this behavior.

From the linked post: You know who always responds to writers fast and enthusiastically? Scammers. To be clear, not everyone who replies promptly is illegitimate. But after enough silence from the legitimate publishing world, disheartened writers become more vulnerable to the siren call of a growing number of predatory players targeting them. … “But they were so helpful,” a recently scammed client told me. This ‘publisher’ responded right away, answered all of his questions, and made him feel like his book really mattered.

I’m going to assume that the author of this post hit two … okay, three … so-called industry professionals capable of exhibiting the same level of professional courtesy exhibited by a slime mold, and that this is not becoming standard.

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