Very funny blog about publishing from an indie publisher in London. This is my life in the slush pile, peoples. For those of you unfamiliar with the term ’slush pile’, it means people’s submissions.
My favourite bits of advice she give to people considering submitting an unsolicited manuscript:
If you’ve written several other Vampire novels set in a nihilistic world sometime in the future, do not include all the synopses (together with their word count, of course) which have not been published, these do not have quite as much allure as you might imagine. Futile productivity and a previous track record of failure is not something prospective publishers look for in an author. If you were internet dating and wrote in your profile that this was the sixteenth dating site that you had joined without meeting anyone, who do you think would want to go out with you?
Personally, my advice to aspiring writers would be thus: don’t bother. You’re probably not as good as you think you are. Even if you are, you’ll spend years getting battered by rejection letters, probably never be appreciated, sell badly, and end up with your dreams broken on the cruel wheel of commercial publishing and probably turn to crack as a way of dulling the pain. If I were you, I’d cut your losses, take up a less demanding hobby (such as heavy drinking) and just keep your literary ambitions to livejournal.
It’s for the best.
Tags: books · publishing · submission
