The two agents I'll be sending my book to this week say to include SAE to get your work back but they can recyle it as far as I'm concerned - I'd rather not include a SAE and ask them to email me should they wish to request more material.

Is it therefore ok not to include a SAE? If so, should I mention this in the letter (eg. 'I haven't included an SAE as I don't need my work returned. If you wish to contact me to send more material over, please drop me an email or call me.'

I just don't understand why, in this day and age, agencies still insist on postal submissions. Cer-azy! :-)

You MUST send an sae, but many agencies are happy for you to say 'please recycle' and just send a small one for their response.

Emma

Many agents just prefer it that way, Trixie. I wouldn't assume, either, that they are prepared to recycle your chapters for you, unless they specify - if they are receiving a couple of hundred subs a week, that's a lot of paper to expect them to dispose of.


x

I have heard apocryphal tales of rejection letters being printed on the back of other peoples mss.


- NaomiM

<Added>

...so there's various interpretations of the word recycle.

Tee hee Naomi!

I'll include SAE's then unless they say they're not needed if you supply an email address.

Thanks! x

You MUST send an sae, but many agencies are happy for you to say 'please recycle' and just send a small one for their response.

I'm doing this, this time. Last year I sent a big enough envelope and return postage for everything to come back and it cost a small fortune - mind you it's no less dispririting to see a smaller envelope arrive back 'cos you already know what's in it before you open it.
Good luck with the subbing.
Debs

Last year I sent a big enough envelope and return postage for everything to come back and it cost a small fortune

The times I sent a full MSS, which really needs a jiffy bag, rather than stuff another jiffy bag awkwardly in, I sent a stamped, self-addressed label for them to attach to the bag to send it back, and as far as I can remember it worked fine.

Emma

Aha! Nice idea!

Funnily enough, I always send a SAE when submitting to agents (unless they ask for email submissions, which very few do these days) but some agents send back a reply with their own envelopes. Yet some of them still ask for SAE. So what's the point of asking for SAE envelope if they are just going to use their own envelopes anyway? Still, it's best to always send a SAE because otherwise you may not hear back from them at all.

I had the same conversation with a woman that I met on Saturday. She is in the throes of trying to make her life as green as possible, and she is having kittens about the amount of paper she is using to submit her work to agents.

When I began to submit I started off sending SAEs to cover the return, but very quickly realised this was pointless and began to request that they recycle the paper.

A small first-class stamped envelope for their return letter is all that should really be needed.

What's changed, of course, is that we assume we need to send a new printout every time. Back in the days when I was first reading how-to-write books, they were still assuming you just kept re-sending the same one until it was too horrible to keep going, or showed too clearly how often it had been rejected and suggesting that you re-did the front and back pages to keep it looking fresh.

Maybe that's the green way to go, rather than wanting to do it electronically when so much of the trade - for good as well as bad reasons - really, really resists that.

Emma

<Added>

For my own purposes I'm trying to train myself to double-side manuscripts. Or I would, if I hadn't got a new computer and my perfectly good old laser printer's drivers don't work properly with it (and no, updating doesn't seem to work either). But they are incredibly annoying to work on if you don't have a table, which is why agents/editors hate it, so I wouldn't inflict it on anyone else.

It's just a shame most agents/publishers don't accept email submissions. Of course, I can understand that as they don't want their inboxes bombarded with spam or what have you, but it may be the greener way to go. Then they have to go through the hassle of deleting their emails at the end of the day... so that makes my arguement pointless.

The other reason is that then they'd have to reply by email opens up a channel of communication, and reasonable aspiring authors have NO IDEA how mad and desperate and frankly certifiable some inhabitants of the slushpile are.

And there's all the crap of files which won't open (or do, and carry viruses) and so on.

Emma

reasonable aspiring authors have NO IDEA how mad and desperate and frankly certifiable some inhabitants of the slushpile are

Now that I can believe. I remember reading an agents blog about how she used to accept email submissions. Until one day she rejected a email submission, but the guy kept on sending her emails in the hope she might eventually accept it. Eventually (when she stopped replying to them), he just came down to her office and practically stalked her! Sure, that's a good impression for an aspiring writer to make! Could you imagine if JK Rowling stalked every agent that turned her book down?

One thing I have noticed with the agents that do reply by email is that they usually have a email address that you can't reply back to. Which makes sense I guess.

I try to live as 'greenly' as possible and was mortified by the number of pieces of paper I have printed off to send to agents.
You can buy recycled paper of course, although I try to get the good quality stuff so that it doesn't look like toilet paper.

After I realised how much I was spending on postage and there was only a limited amount of returned scrap paper I could use at home (with the constant reminder that you are using your rejected manuscript!)I always send a small envelope.

However, if you don't send any envelope at all I can imagine you won't get many responses; it is probably quicker to shove the standard slip into an envelope than relply by email.