12 pet hates

1. Lacklustre submission emails including little information about you or your work. This is your one opportunity to sell your book and tell us about yourself—use it.
2. Submission emails without representative material to read attached. We want a one hit submissions process – to read about you in your introductory email and to read the work immediately afterwards.
3. Queries by telephone, email or letter about what we want to read from unpublished writers. We welcome submissions but we want to read your work, not engage in phone calls or correspondence. We think all the necessary information for submissions is included in this website.
4. An invitation to follow a chain of website links to find an author’s work. Please make it easy for us to access your work—don’t make us have to dig it out. The delete button beckons.
5. Artists' submissions of original work. We much prefer an email submission with attachments or a link to your website (a link to a website is an easy way to view work but again it should not be a complicated trawl through different websites).

6. Inclusion of non-consecutive chapters e.g. 1, 13 and 26. Always send the first three. If you’re not confident in them, revise before sending out.
7. Proposals for fictional novels—what other sort are there?
8. Humorous submissions that aren’t funny.
9. Picture book text submissions that state everything depends on the illustrations. The words are what you are supplying—if it all depends on the illustrations, why are you necessary?
10. Submissions that say your mum loved it.
11. Submissions to more than one agent in the agency—this just wastes our time. Plump for carolinesheldon@carolinesheldon.co.uk or pennyholroyde@carolinesheldon.co.uk
12. Submissions that are obviously dive-bombing the whole of the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook.