Yesterday’s snowstorm a memory prompted by the wind which is arctic and biting. I plod, boot shod and lycra tighted up to my well insulated chest, merrily (a too much coffee/caffein high masquerading as happiness - I can't tell the difference), all the way to work where what would be a pleasant empty in-box awaits me, if only the lack of pressing tasks did not allow me time to catch up with one of my least favourite parts of the receptioning life: The slush pile.
At Pedantic Press we have a strictly no unsolicited submissions policy. In effect, this policy means absolutely nothing as most of the people of send us unsolicited submissions cannot read.
Neither can they spell.
Nor can most of them write.
When I started working here I was full of empathy and sorrow every time I composed a rejection letter, as you would expect from someone who has, in her time, been the recipient of more than a few rejection letters.
Well, in fact, I haven’t had that many rejection letters. That’s what you pay the agent for – or rather that’s what you don’t pay the agent for, since they only get paid when you do, but in the interim, while they are churning out photocopies of the magnum opus and schlepping it around the hushed halls of London Publishers, they are the ones who get to read the thanks, but go * yourself letters.
But still, I was full of empathy. In fear of some sort of nasty Karmic payback, I even offered advice, and in some cases, encouragement.
This was a VERY bad idea.
Writing back to putative authors who have just sent you a letter written entirely in lower case, detailing their ‘character’s’ aka 'my' descent in drug addiction and raise (sic) back up to recovery, is always a VERY bad idea.
‘Don’t enter into any sort of dialogue with them, for God’s sake. You’ll never get rid of them,’ counselled one wild-eyed, hunched, hunted colleague after another.
‘Remember Emma?’ They said nodding darkly… She was always nice to them.’ They shudder. Emma is now doing a rehabilitation course in elementary Victoria sponges. Dark tales of them, especially the 'Northern' one, were then whispered in hushed voices round the office.
I inherited the Northern one.
I was warned.
But did I listen? Oh no. I responded nicely seven times to the mad American who sent me her manuscript of Snakes in a Plane without the snakes until I eventually - on email number 9 - snapped and told her to hiss off. Then she responded by telling me I was unprofessional. Me? Unprofessional? Of course I am. Anyone more professional wouldn't be reading the slush. And then, as predicted by my colleagues, after telling one of my early rejectees that he ‘certainly had a snappy style’ but that his first step should be to find an agent, he immediately responded asking me for the name of one, preferably mine.
I did not reply – look our web site says ‘any submissions sent to us will not be read and will not be returned’. He was already ahead on points by getting a polite letter in the first place. However, a month later my agent (high up the alphabet so early in the trip down Agent Directory Lane) told me that someone had written to her saying that ‘Marion at Pedantic Press’ had said that he ‘certainly had a snappy style’.
The poor wretch had not realised that Moron, I mean Marion at Pedantic Press was merely one rung up the ladder from the Ecuadorian cleaner, and that her recommendation was not quite of the calibre of an Isobel Allende quote slapped on the dustjacket of the book.
So for all wannabe authors out there, let me spell out a few publishing tips:
1. Just because you’ve written a book doesn’t mean that anyone wants to read it. Publishing is a business. You might find your great grandmother fascinating and really prize her collection of antique dentures, novelty braces and belt buckles, but just because she was the first woman in Sheffield to switch from zips to Velcro does not automatically qualify her as a 3 for 2 read in Waterstone's. This is why self-publishing exists. Lulu.com is a fantastic invention for those intent on seeing their name in print without having to murder someone or get their name on the Paedophile Register to put it there (strangely there is a significant number of people on the slush pile who seem to have done both). It would have been my own next step in my literary career (Lulu.com not murder) if those nice people at Waddling Duck hadn’t plucked me from the remainder shop of life.
2. If you are going to send an unsolicited manuscript to a publisher.
Don’t.
3. If you absolutely insist on sending an unsolicited manuscript remember that some capitalisation and punctuation is helpful, particularly full stops and an upper case ‘i’ as in the book what ‘i’ am writing. Using green ink, red paper or block capitals to attract attention works, but only in a Care in the Community sort of way.
4. If you absolutely insist on sending an unsolicited manuscript and your letter is beautifully composed and spell-checked, even if you send a stamped addressed envelope, you may still not get a reply or your manuscript read. Hint: I am the receptionist and yet I get the job of rejecting the slush pile. How far down the pecking order does that make the stuff on the pile? No, it's not because we are callous horrible people, it's because we have already paid a great deal of money for the manuscripts that we do intend to publish and everyone is working overtime to deal with those.
5. When you buy The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, The Writers’ Handbook, The Writer’s Market or some other similar publication, go to the section marked AGENTS not PUBLISHERS.
6. What do you mean you have never heard of The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook?
7. I said do not go to the section marked PUBLISHERS. Do you think I’m making this stuff up?
8. Okay, since you insist. Do you see that bit under the publisher’s entry where it says: ‘We do not accept any unsolicited manuscripts?’ Guess what. It means they do not accept any unsolicited manuscripts. Not even if they are brilliant. Not even if you are Hillary Mantel pretending to be a raw young talent so that you can write an article in The Daily Mail on the stupidity of publishers. Hillary Mantel would not write for the Daily Mail, I’m sure, but that’s beside the point. Not even if the unsolicited manuscript you want to send in is ‘a thrilling romance between raven haired gypsy from the foothills of the Alps (I kid you not) and the mysterious Count Fuckula, set between the magical island of Corfu, Paris, New York and Solihull’.
9. Despite the use of the word ‘unsolicited’, you should not infer that there exist manuscripts (except those by Hillary Mantell, perhaps) that are ‘solicited’. Publishers are not known for standing around street corners asking passing writers if they are ‘looking for business’. Publishers are like adolescent boys, desperate for sex but afraid of having it forced on them by the wrong people, like their mother’s best friend auntie Cynthia. In this case you are auntie Cynthia.
10. And no, ‘unsolicited’ does not mean that you should write nicely and ask first, though it is preferable to sending all 600 pages enclosed in individual plastic folders each with a word count. Writers of unsolicited manuscripts are obsessed with word count. What this phrase really means is that they want a nice, reliable, credible literary agent who may or may not be on first name terms with one of the editors, to have looked at it first, decided it was an undiscovered literary genius and ideal for them, and sent it along. And even then there is a Andean mountain range of manuscripts falling out of every office, full of words of genius most of which, they just can’t publish because the market isn't large enough. Apparently the majority of the Great British reading public is out there writing books about their nervous breakdowns and life as a rent boy instead of walking along to their friendly local bookstore and buying them.
11. And finally, if you’ve written several other Vampire novels set in a nihilistic world sometime in the future, do not include all the synopses (together with their word count, of course) which have not been published, these do not have quite as much allure as you might imagine. Futile productivity and a previous track record of failure is not something prospective publishers look for in an author. If you were internet dating and wrote in your profile that this was the sixteenth dating site that you had joined without meeting anyone, who do you think would want to go out with you?
12 - 100 Get an agent.
No really.
Get an agent.
Easier said than done, I know. But, still:
Get an Agent.
Okay, I know, dear fellow novelist, this is not very hopeful or really very helpful advice, and it’s true that you might expect more sister solidarity from one who has toiled at the typewriter in vain and who was told by the first agent she approached to give up and forget about it because my book would never get published - but, I don’t make the rules. I’m just telling you how it is.
And frankly, with my own book coming out soon - providing that literary agents are not always right - I don’t need the competition.
Nobody ever said I was the nurturing sort.
Not even my mother.
Come to think of it, especially not my mother.
(1579 words)
Get an Agent.
Okay, I know, dear fellow novelist, this is not very hopeful or really very helpful advice, and it’s true that you might expect more sister solidarity from one who has toiled at the typewriter in vain and who was told by the first agent she approached to give up and forget about it because my book would never get published - but, I don’t make the rules. I’m just telling you how it is.
And frankly, with my own book coming out soon - providing that literary agents are not always right - I don’t need the competition.
Nobody ever said I was the nurturing sort.
Not even my mother.
Come to think of it, especially not my mother.
(1579 words)
