I am linking to hands down the best piece ever written on submissions and the slush pile. It is authored by Theresa Nielsen Hayden, big cheese editor for Tor books and one of the most respected editors in publishing.

Well worth your time.

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/004641.html

Buzz, buzz.

This one has been around a long time, Cturkel.

Ann

I am pleased to announce that I have NEVER been rejected by Tor books!

... but have you been disemvowelled? I have.

All right, tell us more.

The best rejection letter I ever got was from, of all places, Hustler. It's the best in the industry. It's printed to look like an engraved card and basically says like,
"Congratulations, you have been selected to receive this coveted rejection slip from Larry Flynt Enterprises. If you want more of these beautiful cards for your collection, you only need submit more work to Hustler. In the event that we accept your future work we are sorry to say we CANNOT issue another rejection slip and you'll just have to settle for the money."

Hustler, by the way, is one of the most efficient, professional, writer-friendly mags I ever wrote for (no, I never got another coveted rejection slip from them and had to settle for their pretty good money about four times)

Oddly, some of the least work-withable people I ever ran across were at Atlantic, Harpers and similar hightone, snotty Eastern scatopolis rags. Since Paul Tough left Harpers any time I talk to an editor there I want to catch a plane to New York and go kick their supercilious asses. Atlantic is my candidate for cluster-bombing.

Actually the WORST magazine I ever tried to deal with was Writers Digest... they are NOT pro-writer there, neither in their editorial dealings nor in their published product.

The two publications most likely to screw writers financially (and the losers of the two biggest guild settlements ever awarded in the US for exactly that behavior) are -- you're going to love this-- Mother Jones and Daily Worker.

My three LEAST favorite rejection slips over my career all say the same thing, to a greater or lesser degree:

Quote:

We LOVED your article. It's exactly the sort of thing we were trying to do around here. But unfortunately we just went out of business.

So, getting nice comments doesn't always help.

Writers sometimes forget the mantra that if it's good, someone will buy it. That's why you start at the top and work your way down. For fantasy, start with Tor, Daw, Bantam Spectrum then work your way down.

One of my first jobs out of college was working at as editorial intern at Warner, in their sci-fi and fantasy imprint. My primary job was writing catalog copy and taking care of the slush pile.

If you think writers are insane, go through a slush pile. It is a whole other degree of insanity, I mean scary insane. The queries, the MS' I went through were just awlful.

But the best part was that in my eighteen months there, I actually pulled six possible buys from the pile. Of those six, four were ultimately rejected by my senior editor. One was actually published, which rocks, and one we turned down because it was such a niche book we wouldn't be able to market it properly and it wouldn't sell and everyone would be unhappy.

That last book did find a publisher a couple of years later and I encountered the author at a convention. I told him how much I enjoyed his book when it came through the pile and was a little bummed Warner had passed on it.

He thanked me profously. Made my year.

I just changed my user name. I'm still, uh, me.

Am I the only one who finds the last couple of posts totally incomprehensible?

Ah that helps. But this has nothing to do with cturkel, then?