Hodderscape Open Submission Window

ctg said:
when you submitted you didn't bother doing the homework and check the background? Or how many they have in the team, or what they're interested about?
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How do you infer that from my comment that they have a huge pile of submissions and we don't actually know how many people are actually reading them for how many hours a day?
 
ctg said:
So, when you submitted you didn't bother doing the homework and check the background? Or how many they have in the team, or what they're interested about?
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Don't be grumpy at people here, please, if you feel you didn't win this particular submissions lottery. Unless, of course, you did your homework and are now able to tell us all exactly how many people are working through exactly how many submissions. :)
 
ctg said:
So, when you submitted you didn't bother doing the homework and check the background? Or how many they have in the team, or what they're interested about?
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And exactly how would you have checked the background? AFAIK exactly nothing has been said about what they are interested in/looking for - beyond the widest possible range of 'take a look at what we already publish'.
 
How many people are on their team? Do we know that? I assume they meant their editorial team. For a new imprint, even at a large publisher, that's likely to be only four or five people at most -- who all, as chopper suggests, have to spend large parts of the day doing other things, because they can't just forget about all the other books they've bought since they started the imprint, books they have to shepherd through the editing and production process.

And all those other things they do depend in part on other people getting their jobs done on time and getting things right. And when they don't, then there have to be conversations, and things sent back until they come back right. (Maybe sent back more than once.) Before a final decision is made to buy a book several people have to read it: maybe the whole editorial team, likely people from sales and marketing as well. So it's not just x number of editors dividing up the work. With the ones that are rejected immediately, yes, one person reads the manuscript and makes the decision. But for the books that are seriously under consideration the job is not divided up between x editors; each of those submissions will have to be read x times. Maybe one reason they are taking so long is because they have received so many submissions that are good enough to pass around to the whole team, more of these promising manuscripts than they anticipated. Editors get sick and can't work for a few days; then when they come back they have to play catch-up with all their other obligations before they can even look at the open-window-submissions again. Authors call up to talk about their insecurities and need to be reassured. Agents call up to talk about their authors.

None of this can be predicted in advance, or how much time it will involve. Which is why they may promise to get everything read by such-and-such a date and respond to all the authors, and really believe that they will get it done when they say they will, and then all these other things come up and they can't.
 
ctg said:
I don't think we'll hear anything. It's like with other updates. Unless you're a published writer, you are nothing but scrub on bottom of their shoes. Don't expect to hear anything. Nothing other than getting a form rejection 13 months later, saying: "...because of the high number of submissions, we cannot provide individual feedback."

We know how long it takes to make an opinion because we have seen it happening in the critiques all the time. So why is it taking them so long?
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Well I got my form rejection only two months later than they initially promised, so I think you're being a bit hard on them, and if the number of 1500 is anywhere near accurate I wouldn't expect anything other than a form rejection.

I mean think about it, giving personalized feedback means reading through the entire thing, paying attention to the minutiae and offering improvements... For up to 1500 books. Which they won't make any money from.

Also I very much doubt they would treat us like scrub on the bottom of their shoes. The book we submit this time might not be what they're looking for, but the next one might be, and for all they know that next one might be the next Philosopher's Stone, and no publisher wants to risk missing out on that action just because they were horrible to an unpublished writer who wasn't quite ready yet.
 
ctg said:
Not 1500 books, 1500 beginnings. Harper Voyager had 5400+ participants.
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Once again, let's put this in perspective. I personally submitted just over 15000 words. If everyone did likewise, then that is twenty two million, five hundred thousand words to mull over. And as Teresa has pointed out, this is while doing the day to day running of their business, which will include submissions not included as part of the open door.
 
From the Hodderscape update:

As we have mentioned before, we received nearly 1,500 submissions, most of which are about 15,000 words long. That means we’ll have read nearly twenty-two million words by the time we’re finished going through all the submissions. As a comparison: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is 198,227 words long. So we’re reading the equivalent of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 113 times in a row. It’s taking us a little while!
 
The December update has been posted, but don't get excited. It doesn't tell us anything we didn't already suspect. My Christmas wish is that time rolls back and they set the maximum word count for submissions at something much less than 15,000. Still no news remains good news. Good luck for those still in with a chance!
 
Thanks for posting, @prizzley. It's nice and clear, at least: if you haven't heard back by the end of the year you've made it to Level 2. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed that none of us hear until the new year. All we want from Santa is, in this case, is an empty inbox!:)
 
I realised when I checked that I actually submitted 2 novels. Heard nowt yet so will have to see what the end of the month brings.
 
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