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Friday, November 27, 2009

Books On Being Ignored

Posted by on Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 1:55 PM

sorrowsofrejection.png
In a piece that is weirdly complementary with this week's books lead, Chris Rodell has written a piece about the frustrations of being a freelancer whose pitches aren't rejected—they're outright ignored:

I’m nostalgic for the days when I used to gauge my how hard I was working by the frequency of my rejection letters. I knew I wasn’t working hard enough unless I was getting at least one rejection a day. This made sense because if the rejections were coming with regularity it meant that my stuff was being considered elsewhere and would by the law of averages produce a positive result. These days I rarely count on getting either the rejection or the positive result. It’s a Twilight Zone existence where I spend my days yelling down a long canyon and hearing no echoes.

I do have to say that Rodell's book pitches—"an upmarket satirical novel, a downmarket non-fiction humor book, a memoir and a fantasy tale about how the world would be better a place if Dick Cheney was a kindly undercover superhero"—might be part of the problem. The world does not need another book poking fun at Dick Cheney, and unless you've got some sort of an obnoxious twist to it, your memoir won't get even a passing glance from just about anybody in the publishing industry. But even people who reject people are being laid off by publishers, too, and whereas most people used to get a form letter, now they are greeted with silence.

It's a soul-crushingly awful time to be an author, I guess is my point.

 

Comments (5) RSS

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1
I'm an editor at a publishing company, and I get unsolicited manuscripts from time to time. I've never responded to any of them.

The issue is that the company publishes reference books, and these submissions are all novels (romance novels, mostly.) I don't even know if the writing is any good - it might be, though the plot synopses are generally enough to dispel my curiosity.

If these authors knew ANYTHING about us, or took a few minutes to do extremely basic research, they wouldn't bother submitting to us at all. It's a little hard to feel that sorry for someone who hasn't put in that effort.
Posted by JBB on November 27, 2009 at 2:58 PM
2
Sounds like applying for any other job these days. I remember getting maybe one or two rejection letters for every ten resumes I sent out, last time I did a job hunt; the rest were just flatly ignored, and that was when the economy was better. It's pretty demoralizing.
Posted by Orv on November 27, 2009 at 3:09 PM
e.strange 3
As someone currently in search of employment, I have to second @2. This is not a problem specific to authors or even this economy. It's a soul-crushingly awful time for many, especially those looking to get paid to do things by other people.
Posted by e.strange http://wtfontbook.blogspot.com/ on November 27, 2009 at 3:32 PM
4
I'd like to add that I believe your memoir will be published without having an "obnoxious twist" if it's well written. But you have to write it like a novel. In other words, you have to write it first and respect the work, and then try to get someone to publish it. Of course, if you're trying to get someone to commit to publishing something you haven't written yet then you have to have some "obnoxious twist." But I feel that not much worthwhile art comes out of books that are sold before they are written, and I believe that books that are truly well written will generally find a publisher, though they might not make any money or become huge sellers.
Posted by Stephen Elliott on November 29, 2009 at 10:54 AM
5
Thanks, Paul, for citing my post and to your readers for their comments. So as not to disparage a genre I enjoy, I'd like to point out that my memoir is about how I went from being a neighborhood nobody to being back-slapping buddies with golf legend Arnold Palmer. Nothing obnoxious about that.

I agree with the comments that the situation is not unique to prospective authors and freelancers. It's everywhere. That's why I think it's incumbent upon us to at least give a civil response to any sincere proposal or query, no matter the field. As I point out in the post, I'm often sought for advice by students or newcomers eager to break into freelancing. I always respond and try and give some advice for these trying times. It's just a polite matter of manners.

Good luck to you all in your pitches and proposals. And Happy Holidays.

Chris R.
www.EightDaysToAmish.com
Latrobe, Pa.
Posted by Chris R. on November 30, 2009 at 2:32 PM

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