Now I'm going to sound like a broken record.
The reason is that many of the submissions they received were either not ready for publication or didn't follow the guidelines.
So what does "ready for publication" mean? Basically it's a manuscript that is nearly free of misspellings, grammatical faux paws, formatting mistakes, and blatant contradictions in style and plot. In other words, it's a manuscript that has been carefully edited, usually several times, and hopefully at least once by someone qualified as an editor, or a good first reader.
Editors prefer to polish a manuscript rather than go over it line by line, so it's up to the author to make it as ready as possible for publication, and if it looks like a first draft, it will get rejected.
IF YOU DON'T READ AND FOLLOW THE GUIDELINES CAREFULLY, YOU ARE REJECTING YOURSELF. No two publications want the same thing, or want it presented to them in the same way. There is no standard. You must read the guidelines of every market you are thinking of submitting to and comply. I know some of them are long, rambling tirades that bore you silly. Read them anyway!
Why is this important? Because, if publishers keep receiving unfitting manuscripts, it hurts us all. The markets will be closed to us or they would be hard to find.
This is directly related to one of my previous posts about how to weasel your book into the Amazon.com
bestseller list.Ralan's newsletter from yesterday had interesting comments from more publishers on the subjects, all pretty much reaffirming what he said.
Categories: writing, publishing, submissions
2 comments:
it's a manuscript that has been carefully edited, usually several times, and hopefully at least once by someone qualified as an editor, or a good first reader.
And more importantly, that the reader heed some of the advice of their critique group or first reader.
If first reader is Mom, "fuggetaboutit." (Unless Mom is an editor. Even then, the emotional connection may make it hard to give and receive objective critisicm.)
It isn't the editor's job to fix what's wrong with a manuscript; it isn't their job to nurture creativity. (A mark of a clueless newbie--opining about how the editor rejected their manuscript and didn't give any feedback.) That's what a critique group or writing partner is for. (I utilize both.)
Even with enough rejections to stoke a large fire, I pity editors.
A critique group/writer's group is exactly what Ralan suggested in his article, as well as your other suggestion, to get someone more qualified to read the ms. before sending it off. Someone like an English teacher, or someone you know has a good eye for these things.
It was going to be the subject of my next post so I'm really glad you brought this up.
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