Second, the bad news. Alas! I received a rejection letter from one of the publishers to whom I sent A MAASAI WARRIOR: LIVING HIS DREAM, LIVING WITH NATURE. (Note slight change in proposed title.) The editor wrote she is so overwhelmed that she is not accepting any unsolicited proposals, even if members of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). Since I do not have an agent, I have wasted time, money, and effort, not to mention the discouragement involved. As an ex-English teacher, I wonder how editors go thru their slush piles, as unsolicited manuscripts are called. I used to do a quick sort when a stack of 165 essays faced me, and divide them into piles I quickly and arbitrarily ranked as "probably tops" thru "whoa! major problems." After grouping that way, I had a sense of how to deal with each separately. Do editors do that? Or just send out rejections to anyone whose work they haven't seen before?
I guess I was lucky to get a rejection! Many publishing houses now have a policy that, if you don't hear in 6 months, assume they are not interested in your manuscript (ms). Can't they pay someone minimum wage or give a volunteer intern the job of e-mailing a brief note: "We're sorry but your ms doesn't meet our needs."
My writer friends (real time and virtual, on listservs I belong to) are professionals. Sometimes I feel publishers treat us as peons rather than needed partners in creating good books for kids. The majority of books readily published and heavily marketed seem to be (1) rip-offs of popular money-making cartoons or movies or (2) those written by movie and television stars, president's wives and children and other VIPs. Not written by professional writers. Some of these books are good, most bad. What does that say about the probable quality of children's literature in the future?
2 comments:
Go, Mary, Go!
I agree. This whole business can be discouraging at times. Especially when editors you think you have a relationship with end up never replying.
I just got a rejection from a manuscript that I had given up on -- it was held over 9 months and I had given up at 6 months. Oh well.
The most recent submissions I made were to houses who state, if you don't hear from us, it's a no. Which just leaves us hanging.
I guess all we can do is keep submitting every few months to different publishers. Which only overloads the publishers' mailboxes, but what else can you do these days?
Congrats on getting a positive response on June 28.
-from the other half of C.W. Bowie
I guess misery loves company, Wendie. But then I love to write and I meet great people at conferences like SCBWI's regional conference last Sat. and have friends like you--so it's hard to hang up my computer cables!
Thanks for the comment.
==Mary
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