slush

The Submissions Process

So, due to a few days of dealing with some totally batshit crazy stuff in acquisitions, I decided to write a detailed post about our submissions process. (If you're a Facebook friend, you've probably read about teh crazies, because I love to share the pain.)

Submissions process. The whole thing. How we evaluate, what we base our decisions on, and everything. No secrets. AND, because I love those of you who WANT to listen to me, I included "greatest hits" links to other related posts at the bottom.

http://mundaniapress.blogspot.com/2009/05/submissions-process.html

Don't say I never get you anything nice.

(Also, note how I did that whole post without swearing. It's like I'm fucking growing as a person or something!)

More From Acqustions: Previous Published Work

I may come under criticism for this and be accused of snobbery/insensitivity/etc, but it really needs to be said.

If you have a previously published book, either by a commercial house or a vanity publisher, that you would like to submit to a new publisher, please, please, please really think about it before hand.

Yes, Mundania is known for our reprints. However...these are typically books by Piers Anthony, Louise Cooper, Anne Logston, Don Callander, Robert Adams...people with a huge fanbase and huge demand for reprints of their back list. These are also books that are completely new to the ebook market, as they've only been in print before.

Easily a third of what I receive in slush are books that have been previously published (mostly self-published).

I *know* how much work goes into a book. Really. I've written thirteen full length novels myself. A lot of time, energy, tears, and emotion go into creating works of fiction. They're our babies.

But these babies have something called first print rights. And when they're gone, they're a much tougher sell.

I have friends who have been through the experience of having their small publisher close and orphan their books, and so they seek a new publisher. It's heartbreaking. I don't blame them. And, honestly, we have contracted some e-pubbed previously published works...but those are few and far between. The reality is that the same amount of money goes into publishing a reprint as does a brand new book, and most of the time, reprint sales are lower. Why? The market's already been tapped. It's not "new."

The other biggest problem is self-published books. Look, I know there are lots of valid reasons for self-publishing. I'm not knocking that. But a lot of people come to the realization that they don't have the time or money to make their book a success, so they come knocking on the door of commercial publishing. The problem is that, half the time, the books are still in print.

If a book is still in print, we CAN'T offer you a contract for it. We need exclusive electronic and print rights. We can't spend time and money evaluating something that, legally, we can't even publish yet.

The same goes for having a book available for free on your website, or a short story on a free ezine--ninety-nine percent of the time, even if you take it down, it can still be read via caches. Why would a publisher drop thousands of dollars on a book that anyone can read for free online? Especially when a big part of said publisher's market is the ebook reading one?

And being dishonest about it in your cover letter and not bringing up the fact it was previously published looked bad on you. We've been burned enough times that we Google before even evaluating a book.

We, fairly recently, had a pair of books go out to the editorial board. Everyone totally loved the books. One reader specifically said, "I'd grab up EVERYTHING [author] has ever written!"

And then I got back a note from one last reader, who did a quick search. The books were previously self-published and STILL readily available for sale.

This isn't just a waste of our time--it's a waste of time for all of the authors sitting in slush. Honestly, if people would stop sending stuff that we can't even evaluate, we could get to the legitimate stuff sooner.

My advice to authors: stop trying to sell something you've already self-published or commercially published. Write a new book. Submit that. You'll have a better chance of selling it and you'll probably improve as a writer. Put the old one aside. Write something new. After you've successfully sold a new novel, THEN you bring out the old one and see if your publisher is interested in a reprint.

Some Rough Slush Statistics...

So for fun today (I have a weird idea of fun), I decided to go through the last 250 pieces in my slush pile from March/April.

Different publishers get different stuff in slush, so I'm not saying this is going to be the same results across the board...BUT it should give you a good sense of what I end up seeing.

What I was looking at, specifically, is how many submissions followed our basic guidelines. We aren't, really, all that strict. Email cover letter with your contact info, book titles/genre/word count, book blurb/jacket copy, and synopsis in the body of the email. Complete novel attached in RTF (no other attachments). For formatting: use a common font (like Times New Roman), italics rather than underlines for italicized text, *** for scene breaks...now, the current guidelines ask for single spaced, but I hate reading things that way, so it'll be changed to 1.5 for the next round. No bold. We take sci-fi, fantasy, horror, paranormal, and mysteries. All this is clearly laid out.

For the purposes of this sampling, I didn't bother worrying about whether any text was bold, or little things like that--just basic, simple guidelines. Did you include the info we need in your cover letter? Did you attach in the right format?

I broke down the stats a little from there into other details. So...here you go!Read more

#queryday

So I'm kinda sad that #queryfail became #queryday. I was looking forward to snarking 'cause I'm a bitch like that.

Anyways, I'm participating. Lots of good information to be found. You can follow me at twitter.com/skyladawn as I go through my slush and inquiries and shudder in horror...

Also, blog post coming up this weekend on my day from hell on Wednesday, and why I'm so behind in everything, from writing to editing.

Slush Lessons with Skyla: Reply Etiquette Edition

Okay, so if you're going to reply to either a rejection or a full read letter, please avoid the following:

Rejection Letter Reply: "Skyla: Thanks. The long period of time you had the MS must have afforded a most thorough evaluation. I trust you have/will wipe the file clean."

Um...'kay, first of all, who gave you permission to use my first name? The rejection came from my email address and name, yes, but it's signed "Sincerely, Editorial Staff, _____ Press." WTF put us on a first name basis? I didn't write "Yo Tommy" and I didn't give you permission to address me so informally.

Second of all, was the snark really necessary?

Third...uh, do you *seriously* think we're keeping your MS on our harddrives to read over and over or something? We REJECTED your book. We DON'T WANT TO READ IT. EVER AGAIN. If we did, we would have offered to publish it.

Next, if you've submitted multiple books and receive notice of full read on two of them, please don't reply to me with this: "While I'm pleased you like Book A, I placed it with another publisher a few months ago. But Title B is still available."

Erm...okay, yeah, it's good that you told me you placed it elsewhere, but you know when that information would have been helpful to me? WAY BACK WHEN YOU PLACED IT ELSEWHERE. Please, for the love of all that is good and holy like Swiss cheese, don't wait until you hear from one publisher to tell them you signed a contract with another for a book they were considering. It's just incredibly unprofessional. Slush readers are paid an hourly wage, and the time/money spent evaluating a book that ISN'T EVEN AVAILABLE FOR A CONTRACT is time/money wasted. And I'll be perfectly honest: my gut instinct is to reject the available book outright because I don't want to work with someone so discourteous. But that's up to my boss.

If you get a rejection letter that basically says, "Look, we're too busy to tell you why we're rejecting your book--sorry," PLEASE DO NOT email back and say, "yeah, but, can you please tell me anyway?"

NO.

I am not here to critique your novel (but I will privately if you give me money). I'm not paid by the publisher to hold your hand and make you suck less. I know it would be really, really nice to get detailed feedback, but if you want that, join a writer's group.

Plus, I just went through over a hundred manuscripts. Do you really think I remember yours? Do you really think I have the time to find out who reviewed your book, track them down, find out WHY they rejected it in detail, and then get back to you? Uh, no, I don't, because I have another hundred manuscripts sitting here.

And the moral of the story is...don't be a douche bag. The end.

Slush Lessons with Skyla

So I resurrected my old Slush Lessons with Skyla notes from the summer to show someone how bad it can get in acquisitions. They were written as notes on Facebook, and I just thought I'd share them here for some laughs.

Here are my first batch of tips:

* Pick an ACTUAL genre. I don't care if your book crosses genres or is really unique: if you say "contemporary spirtual irreverant humour fiction" or something, I have no idea what that is, and I probably won't keep reading to find out WTF you're talking about.

* Don't open the story with a forty word run on sentence that includes five improperly used commas.

* Don't wait until the second chapter before you introduce a character. Really.

* If you write sci-fi, don't give me a two page "prologue" that is basically the voice over introduction to a TV show. This isn't TV or radio, we're not optioning audio books, so don't.

* Don't send the first two books in your series. Just send the first. If the senior editor likes it, he or she ask for the sequel when you get a contract.

* Don't stop the story after the first page to give me a few thousand words of backstory and exposition.

* "Said" is your friend. "Temporized" and "declared enthusiastically to myself" should never, ever be used as speech tags. Ever. If three pages of dialogue go by before I see the word "said", you're going on my auto-reject list.

* Break the story into CHAPTERS for your 50K word YA fantasy. No, a couple of scene breaks aren't good enough. CHAPTERS. Kthxbai.

* Don't tell me in your cover letter that you're sending me your first novel. Some first novels are wonderful. Most (like 99%) aren't. When I see the words "first novel", I'm immediately biased against you.

* Don't list your vanity or author mill published titles as actual writing credits (unless you sold a bazillion copies). I know people get scammed, but it says to me that you're clueless about publishing. No experience at all looks better than bad experience.

* Don't tell me your premise, then say, "and the TWIST is..." I almost rejected a really good novel on the spot today based on that in the cover letter. If you have to tell me that something is the twist for me to get it's a twist...it's not a very good twist. Kind of like how if you have to tell me WHY something's funny, it isn't.

* Be careful what you write on your website. I don't care how good your book is--if I visit your website and see a paragraph that says your submmitted novel has already been accepted and will be released soon, I'm going to be biased against you.

* Try to know a little something about who you're submitting to. Skyla, the progressive minded feminist, is not exactly likely to jump up and down with enthusiasm for your book about a hero defeating a race of evil, dark-skinned, lesbian monsters who have enslaved the menz. No, not even if you're a woman writer.

* If you get rejected, please, please, PLEASE don't send an email back about you've already accepted a contract from someone else and you're so great. If you already have a contract, WITHDRAW YOUR MANUSCRIPT FROM CONSIDERATION WITH OTHER PUBLISHERS. 'Cause we could have been evaluating someone else's work during that time. And "neener neener neener" just makes you look like a jackass.

* DO NOT submit something that has already been published online and is readily available. I can't believe the number of people who have no concept of "first print rights." They're valuable, m'kay? Publishing something on your site or in a free ezine makes it really, really unattractive to a publisher that you expect to give you money for it. DUH.

Publishing is NOT about odds. It's not about luck. It's about writing skill and whether or not your work fits with what the publisher is looking for. That's it.

Tomorrow, I'll recap my lesson on reply etiquette.

Also, my boyfriend got me a diamond necklace for Xmas. I'll blog with pictures later. I'm so very, very lucky to have an awesome boy. :-)