I have a reasonable amount of experience of the publishing world: I worked as a non-fiction editor for a book-packaging company which gave me direct experience of editing for some of the best publishing houses in the world. In the process, I learned a little about the publishing business; the differences between good and publishable;…
Tag Archive: rejection
How Much Can Writers Get Away With?
We know that writers have to get their work as close to perfect as possible to get it published: but the fact that publishers insist on paying editors to then edit those books before they are published implies to some that books don’t have to be quite as perfect as is commonly thought before they…
What Gets Rejected
It’s true that a lot of excellent work gets rejected by agents and editors. Perhaps they don’t think it’s commercial enough; perhaps the story is good but the writing isn’t, or vice versa. Perhaps it hasn’t been submitted to the right agents, editors or imprints. Perhaps it’s too similar to something else that has already…
Personalised Rejections
Very few editors or agents personalise all of the rejections they send out: most rejections are made by a form letter, with no detail or comment. When work shows particular promise but still isn’t quite right, then sometimes an agent or editor concerned will write a little note explaining exactly why it has been rejected….
Why Work Is Rejected
Over the last three days I’ve read commenters on several blogs and message boards insisting that the race, gender or political affiliation is the single reason certain writers get rejected, regardless of the quality of their writing. Under the current submissions system, writers send their work in to agents and/or editors; then their work is…
Unsolicited Manuscripts
Most of the big publishers, and an increasing proportion of the smaller ones, state that they’ll no longer accept unsolicited manuscripts. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t submit to them: it just means that they have to solicit your manuscripts before they’ll even consider reading it. One way to arrange this is to write…
Janet Reid: The Two Parts Of Brave
I’ve just read a wonderful post over at Janet Reid’s blog. Janet Reid is a literary agent, based in New York. She’s exacting and pernickety and very difficult to land as an agent (I make her sound like a prize carp): but she’s also knowledgeable and successful and supportive, and makes fabulous deals for her…
The Street-Smart Writer, by Jenna Glatzer
Jenna Glatzer is a skilled, knowledgeable writer, and is the founder of AbsoluteWrite, which supports the best writers’ message board on the internet. In 2006, the Nomad Press published The Street-Smart Writer, which Jenna co-wrote with Daniel Steven, a noted publishing attorney. I’ve bought several copies of this book since, and dished it out to…
Rejection
There are two ways to handle rejection. You could take it personally. Feel wounded; rant and rave about the unfairness of it all. Obsess about the nuances of the note that came with the rejection, and pick out every shred of meaning that you can from “sorry, not for us”. You could reply to the…
The Truth about the Slush-Pile
There are two little things that a writer can do to make sure they don’t get trapped in the slush-pile. First, make sure their work is ready to submit before they send it off. The vast majority of submissions (perhaps 95%) are nowhere near good enough to be published. I’m not talking about work with…