I received a rejection letter today for a novel manuscript I submitted. The letter was of that breed so typical today: “It’s not you, it’s us. We have to reject so many wonderful manuscripts because we just don’t have the resources to publish them.” It’s very polite, very civilized, and valueless.
No one wants to receive a rejection letter that says your pacing is slow, your characters flat, your scares weak, or your premise hackneyed. But it might help them write better. Constructive criticism helps writers just entering the field and builds stronger community standards, so its disappearance is an important factor in defining the state of horror publishing today.
The days when great genre editors like John Campbell, Donald A. Wollheim and Judy-Lynn del Rey would nurture new authors with rejections full of constructive criticism are long gone. Of course, this is not the fault of any one publisher. Critical responses take time, incur labor costs, and invite debate and/or bargaining with writers. And publishers are walking on such a razor edge to stay profitable with the few books they are able to accept that they have no resources to devote to letters explaining each rejection, no more than they do to expand their publishing line.
Then again, a growing number of small press publishers are turning this lack of feedback into a new revenue stream. For example, hopeful authors can opt for a paid submission in which they are promised a full page letter of criticism by the editor who has rejected their work. Some presses sell whole books produced in-house on how to get published. Some offer webinars or online workshops.
One has to wonder about the expertise and experience of the people offering all this advice. Many seem to have little to no editorial experience beyond their start-up press. And many are young enough that they are offering advice to people who have been writing longer than they have known how to read.
Having dipped my toe into this pool of criticism for hire, I have not always been impressed. Some offer personal tastes as canon (“No more vampires/zombies/apocalypses” or “sometimes/never employ head hopping”) or outmoded proscriptive grammar (“avoid the passive tense” and “Always avoid adverbs in your prose.” Always is an adverb. Physician, heal thyself.) The most common problem, though, is that most of the advice is so trite:
- Read submission guidelines carefully
- Don’t submit the wrong genre
- Don’t use poor grammar
- Be original
It’s not wrong to advise improved grammar, but as paid criticism it has a low dollar value. And I would argue that if a publisher is rejecting a manuscript for excessive grammar or spelling errors, it is incumbent on them to inform the submitter of that. If the writer submitted the wrong genre story or exceeded the word count in the instructions, then tell them so. Such a simple bit of information is not going to strain anyone’s resources, so sending a form letter that essentially conceals the fact is a cop out.
In fact, editors could inform writers of many more complex issues behind their decisions without putting in more work than they do now. Having taught college writing courses as an adjunct for 35 years, I am well acquainted with being overworked and underpaid. The student load and the writing requirements always grew, never diminished, and were always accompanied by demands for ever more robust critical analysis from the instructors. We solved this by developing response modules for every assignment. Experienced teachers could fill them out with barely a pause in their reading. And every year we turned English-as-a-second-language writers into fluent, eloquent A students.
So, does the submitted novel have a weak or slow opening? Note it on the module. Is there excessive exposition that is not embedded in action? Note that. Is the main conflict missing or undetectable? Put a note in the module. And if you find yourself saying the same thing over and over–find a teacher who can’t relate to that–then save it as a macro, or whatever tech hack you prefer. Then for each category, you’ll soon have 5 – 10 prewritten succinct, insightful pieces of advice to offer.
Y’know. If you want to. I’m getting the feeling that most don’t. For one thing, it’s curious that there is such a time crunch for publishers. It’s a given that the big presses are closed; no one gets to them without an agent, and no one gets to an agent without a…what? That’s for another column. So, the medium and small presses take all the weight. The ratio I hear most often of submissions to opening is 100 to 1. And very often, editors say they would be thrilled to publish ten or more out of that hundred, they’re that good!
But once again, “we don’t have the resources.” Why not? Is it like the poetry field where everybody writes and nobody reads? That can’t be: all the figures show an explosion in the growth of readership, especially as the means for conveying the written word multiply. Which also undermines the cost argument. Ain’t nobody going broke buying paper for books these days. So, what is it? Inefficiency? The loss of publishing traditions? Greed somewhere along the food chain? Big bad Amazon?
I do believe some of the people, and the companies they represent, care so little about writers, and by extension the writing itself, that they do not belong in the business. Some policy statements which tell me that include:
- “Due to the large number of submissions, we only contact authors in the affirmative.”
- “No simultaneous submissions…response time 6 months”
- “We can’t promise that we will read every submission…”
- “We generally read only half of the manuscript’s first page…”
Practices like these grow out of something more than a shortage of resources; they reveal a shortage of ethics. They are evidence of business conduct that is not worthy of the writers who are offering to work with them in a mutual venture.
For any editor or publisher who gets to this point, it might be time to ask yourself whether it isn’t time to get out of the business and make way for someone who can do a better job.
I’d like to know what other people’s experiences have been. If you have had books published, how did you break in with your first one? Is the industry getting better or worse?
Speak freely,
Jed
Jedediah Smith 