Queasy Query? Woozy Writing!

A few things need to be mentioned before I delve into the main entree.

I am now at peace with myself as it pertains to my job. I'll elaborate on Monday, but for now, this re-found state of being has for better or worse, allowed me to jump start my writing this past Palm Sunday. And also to a small degree, it has allowed me to start observing my surroundings in greater detail, be they animate (especially animate) or inanimate.

And now, the main entree.

I decided early on that I would do a focused split of my latest project, meaning that I would query both agents and publishers.

While the agent side of the query process ha been relatively straight forward, the publisher side of the query process has been at the very least, odd.

To whit:

So far, I've found three potential publishers to query: Freaky Fountain Press, Liquid Silver Books and Solstice Publishing.

Of those three, the only one that I've felt comfortable in querying was Freaky Fountain Press.

Why?

Freaky Fountain Press makes it crystal clear on what exactly it is that they want and will consider, and what they won't consider. As a newbie writer, having clear and concise guidelines on what a publisher wants or doesn't want is about the best way thing that one can hope for.

As for the other two, one has already been dropped from consideration. Liquid Silver Books also has a plethora of guideline of what they'll accept or not accept. However, there was one particular sentence in their guidelines (under the tab Taboo) that to me, sounded very ambiguous.

Now keeping in mind that they publish all sorts of erotica, one of the types of writing that they will not accept is their version of pornography. Considering that my book is about a woman who goes into adult movies to pay off her loan shark, you can readily see why I would want clarification of that last sentence.

So I sent off a polite e-mail to them asking for clarification of their statement "Their version of pornography".

This was on March 28th, and I have yet to hear back from them. Not very good customer service if you ask me. I may look into resending my question sometime in the future, but for now, they have been relegated to the back burner.

As for the other publisher, I really didn't have a problem with what they would accept, since they made it pretty clear. My question was more in line with how they wanted the submission formatted/attached.

They stated that they wanted the entire manuscript attached to the e-mail, either as a Word document or as an RTF document. What wasn't made clear was if they wanted it as one long document or a series of small documents.

So I found their contact form and sent off a query asking that very question. As of this post, I have not received a response. I'm not entirely worried yet because I'm factoring in how busy they must be and the fact that it was sent on weekend.

Still, it doesn't bode well or make that good of an impression if the average response time to a basic submission question that wasn't covered in the author's FAQ is more than a week. I mean, I once sent off a e-mail to another publisher about a contest they were running, and I got a response the very next day.

In any event, this is just a sample of what I'm probably in store for as I slug my way through the various publishing entities that are out there, be they print or be they e-books.

Querying.

Is just the same as hooking, except that you're giving it away for free in the hopes that you'll become a high paid escort.

Or in my case, a gigolo.