the sweet naiveté of major publishing houses

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Hello. My name is Felicity and I'm a hope-aholic.

About a month ago the head of the children's and youth publishing department at Allen & Unwin told me that one of my books ('Salty the Sea Princess') would 'probably' be back in 'about' a month. Even with all those qualifiers, I scoffed aloud. The better my books get, the longer I have to wait for a rejection. She'd only had it a month - I was expecting about six months.

All the same, I've been counting the days for two weeks now. Idiot! But at least when someone gives out an expected response time, I feel allowed to indulge my insanity after that date - because clearly I'm doing well enough to waste a significant (ie more than they expected) amount of their time. So I can amuse myself between rejections by inventing ever more extravagant fantasies (This week's fantasy is that, since Allen & Unwin is on the verge of replying to two of the three books in my kid's series, they will offer me a three-book deal worth $9000-$15,000, singlehandedly paying off most or all of my debt. Good fantasy, hey?)

Publishers' web sites generally predict a response time of three months, though I've noticed that Allen & Unwin changed that to four months shortly before closing their doors to unsolicited manuscripts late last year (they're so fond of rejecting me that they still read my stuff at this time. Isn't that nice?)

I'm a big fan of Allen & Unwin, actually. They send a card acknowledging that they've received each manuscript, which is good for when a long time has passed and I begin to wonder if the latest book has vanished into the aether (one of my books has done that, but it worked out nicely because by the time I found out - 6 months later - I was ready to do some very cool editing on it). Alllen & Unwin is also perfectly willing to let me send books to other publishers at the same time (which saves me literally years.) Although I've had some form rejections from them, more recently they've been giving me incresingly helpful feedback. The dep. head herself has read at least 1 of my books (doesn't she KNOW that management isn't meant to actually do anything?)

It's clear they're cheering for me as, book by book, I get inches closer to publication. So much for soulless corporations exploiting poor, helpless writers. Once when a reply was especially late, Allen & Unwin express posted the book back to me (with the rejection) - and they've been extremely quick ever since. Publishers these days don't have the time to mentor new writers - yet it's happening to me.

Still, I don't believe I'll be getting a reply for 'Salty' tomorrow. It'll probably come some time in the next month. Probably. In the meantime, I'm a nervous wreck - but that's hardly the publisher's fault.

Actually, I'm pretty impressed by publishers. The big ones receive literally hundreds of unsolicited manuscripts every single week (being able to churn out 100,000 words is one thing; making it good is quite another - I've heard it takes a million words or 5000 hours to get good. Even though I've written ten novels and many short stories, I'm only up to about 800,000 myself, and about 4000 hours). Most unsolicited manuscripts are terrible (and yes I absolutely agree that many published novels are pretty awful too). Yet most publishers in Australia don't even require return postage - so they reply to each and every piece of drivel personally - and those that acknowledge receipt reply twice. They also post back all those hundreds of manuscripts, so that's thousands of dollars a month just to be polite. Plus they get the occasional nut sending abusive letters after (well-deserved) rejections - which is especially sad when the publisher took the time to say why the book was rejected (really really useful info).

Out of the handful of coherant manuscripts, the publisher has to attempt to find a book that

(a) isn't an exact replica of another one (or is an exact replica that will still sell - see point c)

(b) won't take much more editing

(c) will somehow appeal to a public more interested in books 'written' by the latest celebrity.

(d) has some tiny chance of becoming a bestseller, and defraying the considerable costs involved in finding the next one.

If they find one of THOSE, then they have to pay several thousand dollars to the author, the cover illustrator, the printing press, etc etc. THEN they have to attempt to interest booksellers (incidentally, Angus and Robinson now charges publishers just to stock Australian books on their shelves. Do the industry a favour and don't shop there). Usually, the book flops and the publisher makes a loss. (Yes, really. They stay afloat only because of the few books that sell well.) Yet they still go through this whole long process.

Which is pretty impressive. So I sit impressed, and wait for that 3-book deal. Because I'm an optimist too.

Fel

image by jamelah
courtesy of creative commons