cyberpunkdreams
Well-Known Member
I don't know if this will be useful, but as an editor of a small press, I can tell you about one kind of mistake people make when sending us work, and therefore what to avoid! It might seem like mind-numbingly silly things to do, but I'd estimate that at least a third, or maybe a half, of all the writers that submit to us make this mistake. Unbelievable, but true.
Anyway, the mistake is simple: they don't read the guidelines.
Okay, not all publishing companies have submission guidelines, but as a small, specialised press, we actually have a very simple but very clear set of guidelines. Anyone who sends work in must have seen them, as the only place, pretty much, where we publish our contact details, is on these same guidelines. And a lot of people ignore them and send in inappropriate work.
This will be things such as sending us poetry for a series where we're not accepting poetry, material that's off-topic, material that's over the word limit (we even had one author tell us that we 'had' to consider his work at the full length, even thought it was twice our word limit), etcetera. Needless to say, all this work gets rejected without being read. I'm sure no one on this forum would make these kinds of mistakes, but nevertheless, it's hardly surprising that some writers receive a lot of rejections if they don't even follow the publisher's guidelines.
Another thing that I and the other editors found irksome is when people send in work for a new series very shortly after we publish new guidelines. When we publish these, we publicise the fact on twitter, our mailing list, forums, etcetera, and usually start to receive submissions very quickly. The problem is that all our submissions are for specific topics, and whilst we don't insist that authors write new pieces to submit to us, it's disheartening to see authors send in work that they obviously had sitting around on file because it might kind of fit with the topic (it usually doesn't) and they might as well give it a shot (although it's not really a good idea, as it puts us off them in future).
And lastly, one thing that bothers me and our other editors (although it may not bother editors from other publishers) is covering letters that list other places where the author has been published (we even got one that listed us as one of his previous publications, even before we'd published his work). The thing is here, we really only care about the quality of the work that the author is sending us -- other publications are a bit irrelevant, and it often comes across as boastful. But that's maybe more of a personal thing.
Anyway, I hope at least some of that was useful!
thanks
Rob
Anyway, the mistake is simple: they don't read the guidelines.
Okay, not all publishing companies have submission guidelines, but as a small, specialised press, we actually have a very simple but very clear set of guidelines. Anyone who sends work in must have seen them, as the only place, pretty much, where we publish our contact details, is on these same guidelines. And a lot of people ignore them and send in inappropriate work.
This will be things such as sending us poetry for a series where we're not accepting poetry, material that's off-topic, material that's over the word limit (we even had one author tell us that we 'had' to consider his work at the full length, even thought it was twice our word limit), etcetera. Needless to say, all this work gets rejected without being read. I'm sure no one on this forum would make these kinds of mistakes, but nevertheless, it's hardly surprising that some writers receive a lot of rejections if they don't even follow the publisher's guidelines.
Another thing that I and the other editors found irksome is when people send in work for a new series very shortly after we publish new guidelines. When we publish these, we publicise the fact on twitter, our mailing list, forums, etcetera, and usually start to receive submissions very quickly. The problem is that all our submissions are for specific topics, and whilst we don't insist that authors write new pieces to submit to us, it's disheartening to see authors send in work that they obviously had sitting around on file because it might kind of fit with the topic (it usually doesn't) and they might as well give it a shot (although it's not really a good idea, as it puts us off them in future).
And lastly, one thing that bothers me and our other editors (although it may not bother editors from other publishers) is covering letters that list other places where the author has been published (we even got one that listed us as one of his previous publications, even before we'd published his work). The thing is here, we really only care about the quality of the work that the author is sending us -- other publications are a bit irrelevant, and it often comes across as boastful. But that's maybe more of a personal thing.
Anyway, I hope at least some of that was useful!
thanks
Rob
