![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Apr. 8th, 2005
Reading at work
Apr. 8th, 2005 12:52 pmFollowed a link from Fanficrants to a editor's weblog. It was an essay about publishers' rejection letters and how authors take them Really Personally -- selections were given from a site that has author's post rejection letters they've gottne with their comments online. One of them was a gem. The editor basically told the author that her book was wonderful and they would have been happy to publish it, but they were a small press and had a very good year, and were out of resources. The editor also said that the auhtor should have no trouble selling the manuscipt elsewhere. The author's reaction? She was PISSED.
Now, I can understand being upset about coming so close and not getting it, and that would probably ahve annoyed me the day I opened that letter. But, then, I would stop and think 'I did everything right'. Seriously, if the manuscript was bad, the editor would have stuck a form letter in an envelope and be done with it. An insider in the industry just told the author that her book was publishable. This isn't a cause to be angry (mildly disappointed maybe, and possibly irked that it wasn't closer to the top of the pile) -- it's a cause to be happy, as similar publishers who haven't been having good luck would most likely pick it up.
It's like grad schools. I know the average graduate school in astronomy accepts at most 12-15 students. I've been to visitation days and such. Getting rejected from Harvard or Arizona doens't mean I'm a bad student -- it means that there are applicants (and not many, possibly) who are slightly better. And heck, it could be that last year they got a lot of students, so had a small pool -- Cornell accepted a lot of students this year, because last year they got 1 (a combiantion of bad luck and fewer prospective students, because 2 years ago they had good luck with prospectives). It's a matter of small numbers and bad luck sometimes.
Now, I can understand being upset about coming so close and not getting it, and that would probably ahve annoyed me the day I opened that letter. But, then, I would stop and think 'I did everything right'. Seriously, if the manuscript was bad, the editor would have stuck a form letter in an envelope and be done with it. An insider in the industry just told the author that her book was publishable. This isn't a cause to be angry (mildly disappointed maybe, and possibly irked that it wasn't closer to the top of the pile) -- it's a cause to be happy, as similar publishers who haven't been having good luck would most likely pick it up.
It's like grad schools. I know the average graduate school in astronomy accepts at most 12-15 students. I've been to visitation days and such. Getting rejected from Harvard or Arizona doens't mean I'm a bad student -- it means that there are applicants (and not many, possibly) who are slightly better. And heck, it could be that last year they got a lot of students, so had a small pool -- Cornell accepted a lot of students this year, because last year they got 1 (a combiantion of bad luck and fewer prospective students, because 2 years ago they had good luck with prospectives). It's a matter of small numbers and bad luck sometimes.