Almost every work day, at the end of the day, I sit down with a stack of submissions. Sometimes they’re romance submissions, sometimes they’re mysteries or thrillers, sometimes they’re science fiction or fantasy. I don’t just limit myself to my own submissions either — at Tor/Forge, every two weeks, the entire editorial department gets together in a giant room with a big stack of submissions, and we get rejecting.
Nope, I don’t mean reading. I wrote rejecting, and I meant rejecting (grammar aside!).
Tor/Forge, all told, gets somewhere between 25 and 75 unagented, unsolicited submissions every single business day. So let’s say there are 365 days in a year, minus 96 (or so) Saturdays and Sundays, minus 10 business holidays and whatnot. That leaves us 259 days per year for unsolicited submissions to stack up. That means we get between about 7,000 and 20,000 submissions every year, not counting stuff from authors we already publish, and agents.
We publish an average of 15 books per month that are original to our house in hardcover, trade paperback, and mass market (and another 15 – 20 books per month that are reprints of one sort or another). That’s about 180 books every year. Subtract from that the number of authors we work with on a regular basis and… well, the odds aren’t good.
How many of those 20,000 submissions actually become real grown up novels?
Not many.
In fact, in the last five years, I can count on one hand the number of books that we pulled out of the slush piles and published. All of them stellar examples of their genres, all of them praised highly by other stellar novelists, all of them worked on for hours and hours by the editors who loved them and cuddled them and nurtured them into becoming published novels.
And that sucks. It really does. But think about how many truly horrible books are published every year. Now aren’t you glad that you’re not reading the unpublished ones?
But, Anna, you say, that’s not fair! What about all the really good books that don’t get published?
Ah, grasshopper, how little you know of the slush pile! Yes, it’s true that there are, in fact, very good books existing in the world that aren’t being published by a major New York house or a well-respected small press.
However, consider this: I have worked in publishing for over five years now, and in all of that time, I have not purchased one book out of the slush pile. Certainly I’ve seen books that were pretty good, and books that were decent, and books that were readable. I’ve seen books that even could have made an all right showing if we’d gone ahead and published them — if I’d been willing to put in the work necessary to make the book a success.
I wasn’t willing. Because for me to put that energy into a book… well, I’d have to love the book. If I don’t love the book, why should I spend all that time and energy on it?
But, Anna, you say, that’s selfish of you! To deny the world a wonderful book because you don’t love it? You’re a bitch.
And to that I say…. “Yes. And?”
Editors are, really, paid for their opinions. Editors are promoted when it’s made clear to the bigwigs that this particular editor’s opinion is also shared by a couple tens of thousands of members of the reading public. An editor’s opinion isn’t law, neither is it flawless — and when an editor reads a submission and winces at the phrasing of a sentence, you can lay a pretty successful bet that nine out of ten people will wince too.
I don’t mean to sound like a downer. Obviously first-time writers do get published, and sometimes they don’t even need an agent to do it. The right place, the right time, the right luck, the right talent, the right subject matter — getting that first book published is a combination of luck, skill, talent, and persistence. If you don’t persist, you’re never going to be that one in twenty-thousand to get pulled out. Because…
Sometimes we do set submissions aside. Sometimes we read the entire submission and then write to the author to ask for more. And sometimes (but not often) we buy that submission, because it’s too good not to share with the rest of the world.
No related posts.
Ouch. The truth hurts.:shock:
Note to self– avoid slush pile, find agent first, and attempt to ‘unread’ harsh reality.:lol:
M
I love it when someone ‘tells it like it is’ but that doesn’t mean it’s a painless process. Respect to you, Anna, for the honesty.
And to the Doubt Demons – let battle commence!
Great column, Anna. I blogged about this subject yesterday. Why do so many writers believe editors owe them free critiques? If you people don’t want to buy a manuscript, why on earth would you spend your valuable time telling the author where she lost you and how she might catch your attention next time? Even if you’re a “nice person” and enjoy helping out that way, don’t you have enough to do already?
If an insurance salesman comes to my house, makes his pitch, and I choose not to buy, am I morally obligated to tell him how and when he lost my attention and what he should do to improve his sales technique? I don’t think so.
LOL Daria! I’m wondering the same thing now!
Thanks for the post, Anna. It’s interesting, and at the same time sobering.
Yes, thank you. Writers need to be forced to open their eyes–before they get slapped in the face by reality. Reality being that this is a kind of business where even when you win, you never win big. That old “don’t quit your day job.”
When someone is out of college and works as an accountant, do they tell him “hey, don’t stop flippin’ burgers, it’s not likely you can ever earn your living as an accountant, only a chosen few can?”
Do editors keep another full time job so that they don’t starve?
Policemen?
Doctors?
I’ll double the ouch, but I think this is something we writers absolutely need to hear. Excellent post!
Sad but true.
I worked as a reader for a publisher for a short time. A very short time. It was deeply depressing to read what some people considered publishable.
My job was to read partials and a few fulls from time to time. I think I only saw three fulls. One was interesting. It had a beautifully polished, beautifully crafted first three chapters, but after that it fell apart.
Now I’m a writer myself I couldn’t do that job, but I don’t think I would want to any more.
Lynne Connolly, GSOLFOT, Author of historical and paranormal romance, EPPIE 2005 winner
Ouch. But I began to see that myself when I judged contest entries. Most of them were forgettable. Once in a while I’d find a sparkler, and those were the ones that earned high scores. I’d imagine it must be an exciting change of pace when you actually do find a sparkler in the midst of those piles.
It truly is amazing how many submissions are made to NY publishers and small presses, and how few are published. I think that having an agent is key. And if your work is rejected, they can make the pain oh-so-much easier to take.
When I worked at Silhouette (feels like FOREVER ago–1988-1988), the powers that be instilled in the editors a sort of magical feeling about the slush piles. I kid you not. We were told that gems were hidden in there, it was our job to find those gems and develop them. There were perks/awards given out each month to the editor who bought the most new authors–sometimes just one, sometimes as many as five or six, if the editor was reading on the subway too. Things may have been different at H/S because of the open-door submission policty; agented/unagented were treated the same, except agented ms’s were responded to faster.
There was also an enormous respect for the RWA–unpublished and published alike–for that woman in Kansas or Nebraska, writing against all odds in her basement while the kids were in school, while her husband complained, etc. That woman writer, without connections, without an agent, who either was an amazing storyteller or had an amazing story to tell, was who we were always on lookout for.
I know–sounds very “give me a break,” but that’s how it was during my editor days. I hear Anna big time, but I found many unagented first timers in the slush pile. Most well known is Maggie Shayne. And if I named some authors I rejected, your eyes would bug out–there are three NY Times bestsellers among them. I did a lot right and I made a lot of huge mistakes as an editor, but the BEST thing about that job was the woman writer alone in her basement in Kansas, typing away against all odds–and some of the true stories we heard about some of our authors’ lives (the ones who did get published, anyway) would also bug out your eyes–what they were up against from relatives, jobs, husbands, finances. I can’t tell you how much I learned from that.
There were A LOT of duds in the slush pile, but there were some real sparklers too.
Oops, meant to say I worked at Silhouette from 1988-1998.
Man. I’m depressed. I need chocolate.
Melissa: I actually think you’re right. There are gems in the slushpile, and certainly slush is worth reading for those.
However, the Silhouette acquisitions/publishing philosophy was (and is) really different from Tor’s, particularly because it’s such a category house, looking for such specific things — whereas Tor’s slush is a wide range of genres, from a wide range of people, few of them RWA members getting up at 5 in the morning to write in their basements before they have to take care of their families.
That has a big effect on the way we view submissions. No Tor editor can buy five books every month, much less five books written by brand new authors — especially since we publish book by book, rather than line by line. For example, we generally publish one science fiction book every month. That’s 12 science fiction books per year — but most of those are authors who we already publish or who have track records. We maybe publish two or three brand new SF writers every year, maybe — and that means that there will be 6,000 or 8,000 people who submitted SF proposals to us who don’t get published by us.
That’s very different than a publishing house that does thirty romances per month. When you’re talking about that kind of volume, there’s more room for diamonds (or cubic zirconia
) in the rough.
Yet there is something nicely challenging about it. If the cream rises to the top, then damn it, I’m going to be the cream
:grin:
Daria: Agented submissions are very hit or miss — I’d say, about 50% of the time, I read the submission and wonder what the agent was thinking. Of course, about 50% of the time, the agent hasn’t bothered to ask what I’m acquiring.
And that leaves another 50% of submissions from agents that are great — but about 90% don’t work in one way or another.
Most of the books that I’ve edited for Tor have been agented submissions, but five of my authors don’t work through an agent, and didn’t submit through an agent.
Wow, that was a nice post, Melissa.
I’m glad Anna Genoese was so truthful. Note to writers without agents: do not submit to Tor/Forge!
I agree with Brenda Coulter. Agents and editors do not owe writers anything about their submissions. There are editors out there that do send a few words more than form rejections. They don’t have to but they do anyway, and I think that’s great (and sometimes underappreciated).
Here’s a thought: Are editors and agents ever afraid that if they do give something more than a form rejection, some writers might be so encouraged by it that they’ll take it as a revision request even when it’s not?
I see so much possibility for harassment and near stalking there. You know, give them a little finger and all that. Because let’s face it. A lot of us writers? Don’t exactly have both feet on the ground. And that’s putting it nicely.
“And that leaves another 50% of submissions from agents that are great – but about 90% don’t work in one way or another.”
Thanks for replying! I wonder if I should be hopeful or scared… I mean, if even those [gods] agented authors don’t always hit the ball right…
All you aspiring authors, don’t be disheartened.
Knowledge is power. Now that you know how it works, your expectations will be realistic. This was a fabulous column that shed some light on a topic often left in the dark.
Although I have an agent now, I didn’t then. The odds may not be great, but keep writing, honing your craft, submitting, and dreaming. It does happen.
I’ve got my fingers crossed for you.
Anna and Melissa, your comments are great., that was a great post. Yes, it’s a little daunting, but that’s the business! For sake of further discussion, what about ms that writers have pitched to you in editor appointments at conferences? Any stats on how many sparklers you may have found from those submissions?
Mary Stella, it’s so strange, but I’d say 60% of the yeses I gave to conference pitches were never submitted. We always expected an onslaught, particulary every August, but it never seemed to come! Not sure why. Authors got a case of the nerves? Wanted to perfect the submission? Didn’t have a manuscript in the first place? Of the ones that were submitted, I can’t remember at all how they fared. I do remember that the Golden Heart finalists were considered a BIG deal and read very carefully.
Another thing: editors have worse memories than you might think. Do with that piece of knowledge what you will . . .
Huh, that last sentence came out funny: What I meant was: With so many submissions/authors/work/stress, editors don’t remember every little this and that . . .
Even as a multi-published author, I still sometimes have to wait weeks and months for decisions on my submissions. I know unpublished, unagented writers often have to wait longer, and I know editors’ work loads are the reason.
This is what I’ve always wondered. What if Harlequin/Silhouette (or any publisher) hired one full-time person to do nothing but deal with slush? It could be an entry level position. It seems about 90 percent of the slush could be dispatched quickly this way. Then the rest–the ones that show some promise–could be left for more experienced editors to deal with.
I’m sure there are some practical reasons why this wouldn’t work, but still, I’ve always wondered.
Anna,
Wow! I knew the percentage was high, but that’s downright frightening. I appreciate your honesty about the Tor/Forge process of elimination. It certainly makes the decision to query much more difficult.
Great post because you gave hard numbers. It’s sometimes difficult to realize not only the competition between published authors, but unpublished good writers who are all fighting to be that one new author a house takes on every month — or year.
This is key and I hope every writer reads it over and over. I doubt I would have sold–definitely not to a big house–without an agent. I know I wouldn’t have sold without a combination of all of the above.
I love this post.
Is it harsh? Hell, yes. But is it truthful? Indubitably. I love to know what is going through the Editor’s mind as he/she sifts through the amassed slush pile. I love the inside look.
Will I, as an unagented author, sell to Tor? Probably not. But I appreciate the honest truth and bottom line.
I believe that all good work will eventually rise to the top. It’s the perseverance. The pluck. And the talent will win out. Not all of this is evident in a query or three chapter submission.
Grins,
Crystal*
I submitted to several slush piles long ago and was rejected, and what I want to say to those editors is THANK YOU! You were darn right to reject the junk I sent in! I can imagine if it got published, with my name on it, to be returned in droves by every bookstore in the country. My career would have been very short!:grin:
It hurt at the time, but I had to learn that you don’t want to get bought until you write that gem. And until the editor loves it and wants to spend a huge chunk of time with it. That makes a huge, huge difference to your career.
Thanks, Anna, for the interesting post!
To look on the bright side, if you have a decent book (and by that I mean “not total crap”) that you’re sending to the correct editors, you’re ahead of 90% of other writers. Most romance publishers (except Harlequin) report sumissions of around 5,000 mss a year to Writer’s Market Place. Only 500 would be published by anyone who isn’t derranged. *g* Of those 500, only 50 are probably actually *good.* So now you have fifty books that are good, and one of those, on average, will be bought by someone in the publishing house in a decent year. And if you have five houses you send stuff to, each of which is largely receiving the same batch of mss, your chances raise to about 1 in 10 for a good mss.
If you reach that top 1%–regularly getting numerous personal rejections and almost-but-not-quite buys on everything you send out–then the game becomes how to make a nibble into a sale. This is the tricky part. And this is where luck and other things come into play.
To make you all feel better, I sumbitted three complete copies of my first published ms upon request to three different publishing houses–and it was unagented and therefore “slush”. The result? They all wanted to buy it. One of my big helps was that I got one request for a full from a VERY big name editor and then used that to make it sound like there was important interest in the ms without actually bragging, and so I got the other two editors to read with interest rather than an “Ohmigod, not ANOTHER” attitude. *ggg* A mere month from pitch to purchase–it’s amazing how fast publishing houses can move with the proper incentive.
But I sent out two other mss before that. The first was, with painful obviousnes, very amateurish. *g* I got one personal rejection from an agent and one from an editor. I only sent it to three publishing houses (one of which lost it) before I saw the light and buried it.
The second was good. Many personal rejections and two detailed rejections of the full. But it wan’t great, and it wasn’t extremely marketable.
The third one I wrote I didn’t submit anywhere. It was good, but it was not marketable as a standard romance, and I knew it. I just needed to write it for me.
The fourth was the one that sold. And I know my sales could not have been as strong if any of the others had been bought, so I’m thrilled to come out with a bang and not a whimper, even though it did mean a lot of mental anguish.
I’d piled up over 60 rejections for my first try at getting something published before I finally got an agent (for a completely different work) and got stuff into print (again, for completely different novels). I always figured it as a numbers game: as an author, I keep producing, refining, and rewriting work until someone somewhere buys it. This means that I’ve somewhere in the neighborhood of 18 novels written, 8 of which have found a home and are in varying stages of revision or release.
The whole point of this is, I always figured submitting manuscripts was the numbers game. If you keep writing and submitting, sooner or later you’re going to get practiced enough that you can write something good that gets out of the slush pile, or you find a niche that you can write in that editors will buy. The thing I find amusing is writers that have one book, one book only, and keep sending the same query letter or sample chapters over and over again, expecting Their Little Baby to be given a rose-ribboned cradle somewhere.
Then I started weeding through submissions for two different small presses and I very quickly learned to give the work the “scan test”. If the query didn’t grab me or had glaring grammatical or punctuation errors, I canned it. I learned not to spend too much time agonizing over why I rejected a work. Not that I didn’t appreciate the amount of time and effort that goes into making a novel-far from! But I gained a whole new respect for the poor souls who have to wade through the slush piles, and I stopped feeling so bad about my own pile of rejections.
I never took rejection very personally either, which I think some authors do. (Being the rejecter instead of the rejectee helped that trend.) I had a group of friends that would get together and read out the latest batch of rejection notices for my second novel in different styles- Shakespearean, Julia Child, you name it. That was incredibly funny and freeing…
Thank you, Anna! Well done!
Anna and Melissa, thank you for an honest look at how a manuscript gets read. I knew the odds were high but wow. Anna, your slush pile is hugh!
Actually Tor is great for SF/F writers because they do still read slush and buy from it (even if rarely). A bunch of the top houses don’t take unagented submissions. I also wanted to add a mention of Slushkiller, a classic post by Teresa Nielsen Hayden (another Tor editor) containing the hierarchy of slush. It runs from “1. Author is functionally illiterate” to “14. Buy this book”. Funny reading and very encouraging in some ways: if you can string together passable English paragraphs and the reader would notice the chapters being shuffled, you automatically make the top third.
Thanks for an edifying article Anna!
editors and rejection
For my part, I have no real advice for people who are trying to get published and haven’t found a way in yet beyond the standard: you do need an agent; to get an agent, you have to write a story…. They truly believe they are capable of a given tas…
*claps* Lovely article, Anna!
In regards to the rest of the comments … I don’t find this particularly harsh. It’s the way the industry works, and isn’t something that’s going to change; publishers are inundated by more books than they have time.
I’ve done minor editing before, for an anthology that was cancelled before it reached publication. Out of something around thirty or forty stories submitted, there was only one that had me running across the room to the editor saying, “You are buying this one, right?”
There were about three others that were … competant, but not great. I put them in the, “Request rewrite” folder simply because we were a small press endeavor and didn’t have that many submissions.
Unless the book has a lot of promise, it’s not feasible for a major publisher to ask for rewrites. It just isn’t.
My attitude’s always been, if you can’t handle the (strong) possibility of rejection … you’re in the wrong business. I’ve had somewhere around 150 rejections on short fiction at this point, and it hasn’t stopped me … that being said, the first fifty or seventy-five, I want to crawl under my desk and hide–I can’t believe I thought that crap was publishable!
I tend to think that if you really want to be published … the odds aren’t going to stop you. Hell, I know I’m still at it.
Nonny
And if you think you have it bad with novel submissions, just try sifting through a slush pile for SF magazines, especially media SF magazines. Submission guidelines? What are those? Pointed notices that the magazine doesn’t accept fiction in any form whatsoever? Then where am I supposed to submit my 2000-page Absolutely Fabulous/Farscape slash fanfic? Notices that the magazine does not, under any circumstances, publish reviews of films until they’re available on video or DVD? Well, you’ll take my off-the-cuff, barely literate droolings that attempt to pass for a review of the latest Star Wars film because I’m different, won’t you?
Thanks for the article, Anna: it helped remind me both of why I quit editing nearly five years ago and why I finally came to my senses, realized my limitations, and quit writing three years ago. Both are decisions that I still haven’t regretted to this day.
You must be a very willful person. I cannot imagine quitting even though I keep bitching–at least for the reason that I won’t forgive my competitive streak…or it won’t forgive me. I’d just know my place in the publishing universe will be taken by someone else, and by quitting, I’m only making their job easier–now, can I allow that?
Question: Does following the guidelines give you an advantage over people who did not do their homework? Does it make the MS stand out at all?
I thought mine was a slush pile pick? Shows how much I know. Nothing. That’s what. I would not want to be on the other side of the desk doing what you do. You have more patience and compassion than I.
I didn’t think this article was harsh at all, and I say that as an unpublished writer who is about to submit her first manuscript to a publisher. It’s too bad that so many people out there simply don’t want to face the truth about how things work in the publishing business. I’m sure those of us in the RWA have heard of or witnessed all manner of bizarre behavior at conferences, and I worry that this causes all unpublished writers to get tarred with the same stalker-ish brush. It’s to the point that I almost want to run in the opposite direction when I see an editor, agent, or published author at a conference, because I sure as hell don’t want to come off as some kind of desperate weirdo.
Great post, Anna.
I think a lot of people submitting manuscripts also don’t realise how underpaid most editors are. Not only is it a hard, demanding job without a lot of job security, but the majority of editors in NYC are barely making enough to cover their rent and run-of-the-mill living experiences.
yes, and the majority of NY published authors are not making enough to cover their expenses at all
the whole industry is underpaid
Anna,
Thanks for sharing an insider’s look on the reality of publishing and not whitewashing or sugar coating it. Sometimes the truth hurts, but other times it builds the fire of determination all the higher.
So what does it mean when you get hand-written notes on how to improve the story at the bottom of the rejection form letter? Someone at Tor took the time to give me some insight into why my story was rejected. After reading your entry, I feel pretty fortunate!
So what does it mean when you get hand-written notes on how to improve the story at the bottom of the rejection form letter? Someone at Tor took the time to give me some insight into why my story was rejected. After reading your entry, I feel pretty fortunate!
Krista: That means someone here saw a spark in your writing and thought that a hint or two might push you over the next hurdle. Congratulations!!
1 in 20,000 !!!
===============
Even if only 1% of novels were of the standard you commonly find in the shops, that’s still 200 novels that deserve to be published.
Does an editor read the entirety of those 200 hundred novels to discover which is the most deserving?
Anna has already admitted that she does not and cannot. How could anyone even unearth those 200 from the 20,000 without reading a substantial part of at least a tenth of them, a whopping 2,000 novels? Nobody could spot the best 200 just by reading the first 5 pages; it’s absolutely absurd.
But suppose Anna could unearth the best 200,
I’ve read a lot of novels where I didn’t get into the story until I was half-way through, and I only pushed on because the book had been recommended, but by the time I got to the end, I was blown away – “Catch-22″ by Joseph Heller is one such example. The only way to judge those 200 novels would be to read every single one from beginning to end, and then reflect on each one a little.
Now are you going to tell me that, having done all that, you could happily publish just one of them? You wouldn’t be able to choose just one, and if you were forced to, it would be depressing and soul-destroying.
And it’s even worse than that because some days you pick up a novel, and it seems like utter drivel, then you reread exactly the same thing another day and really enjoy it – and the only thing that’s different is the mood you’re in.
The only solution is to publish everything and let the readers decide what’s worth reading.
yea… and what about all the famous writers that have had their books rejected by the likes of Ann..Harry Potter could have ended up on the slushpile/
Xenical
http://www.xenical.greatnow.com