Standard Literary Agent Response

Standard Literary Agent Response
by Matt Miller
Dear Author,
Please forgive the informality of this stamped card, but we are going to send it anyway. You see, we expect you to address us by name and to write an individually-tailored letter, but we are so important that we just stamp our reply on a card and mass mail them out.
We have carefully read and considered your submission. This means that we had an assistant who has no literary background or even a college education glance at the first page. If it was not absolute crap, the crap that is published today, we instructed the assistant to casually toss it in the garbage, because we do not, repeat do not, want quality, literary fiction. We would rather receive mass-produced crap written by people with the literary skills of a third grader.
We do not feel that your submission is right for us at this time. Moreover, we are not taking on new clients. That’s right: we are so rich and successful that we do NOT want to make more money. Even though new clients would sell books and make us richer, we are declining new clients because, again, we have no desire to make more money. We are as rich as we want to be, and any more money would just be too much.
Please keep in mind that the opinions of literary agents are entirely subjective and based on crap. There may very well be another agent who will feel different about your work. We wish you the best of luck, you poor sap. Now, we have to go publish a bookful of crap because the owner’s nephew wrote it.
Sincerely,
Literary Agent