Website of the week

This site is an online directory of many of the top literary agents, editors and publishers in the U.S., U.K. and Canada, held together by an odd bond-they’ve all rejected manuscripts by Gerald Jones, the website’s creator. Jones lists a lot of important people who would prefer not to be included in Jones’ online Rolodex, but he also includes the e-mails passed between him and the publishers as they repeatedly snub his books.

The site tells of an incident when Jones rewrote a manuscript for an agent. “Recognizing that you probably know more about how to sell a book than I do, I … came up with the Claudia Cross Commercial Version,” he told agent Claudia Cross. “Don’t think I liked getting rid of 80 pages either, but, no, no, no they can’t be there anymore. Claudia Cross says so.”

“[The book is] entertaining and excruciatingly honest, funny and tragic, but [we have] no compelling reason to publish it,” wrote one publisher. “It’s not often that a person gets dissed with such high praise,” Jones wrote in response. “The only thing I found missing from your note was a compelling reason not to publish the son of a bitch.”