Daily Excerpt: Publishing for Smarties (Ham) - Appropriate Responses [to rejection letters]
Excerpt from Publishing for Smarties by BL Ham
Appropriate Responses
Instead of feeling and expressing resentment, there are four much more useful things that you can do. These are:
- become excited;
- analyze the letter for educative information;
- revise your manuscript, if warranted; and
- find another publisher who might be interested in your book.
Become Excited
Why should you become excited? Because finding a publisher is a lot like selling a product. Actually, you are selling a product: your book. Just as it usually takes about ten cold calls to sell a product or get a donation for a worthy cause, so, too, it takes many rejections (typically, dozens more than ten) before you will get a nibble from a publisher, especially if you are a first-time author. So, count each of those rejections as an indication that you are getting closer to an acceptance, just like salesmen do.
Analyze the Letter
Analyze any information at all that is in the rejection letter for any enlightenment it might provide about the real reason your manuscript was rejected and follow up on that enlightenment. Perhaps there is a cycle in which the publisher accepts certain kinds of material, e.g., Christmas topics in June, not in December, in order to have time to prepare them before the season starts. Learn from this for the next submission, and prepare yourself to take advantage of the cycle. If your manuscript has not been rejected out of hand, you might follow up with a query as to whether the acquisitions editor would consider looking at it again at the proper time.
If an acquisitions editor gives you an honest assessment as to why your book was rejected, be very grateful, no matter how much that assessment hurts. Few editors will take the time— or risk—to provide honest, detailed feedback. When an editor does that, express your gratitude, not your resentment—and do follow up with a thank you letter. Then, follow up with an action that will improve your writing. Perhaps comments were made about your style (too flat), your grammar (ungrammatical), or your punctuation (incorrect). If any mechanical problems (grammar, punctuation) were indicated, treat yourself to a purchase of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, the little book that most of us used in high school. It is as valuable to you today as it was to you when you were a student. Using the rules therein as a guide, carefully check every punctuation mark in your book, as well as such things as subject-verb agreement and hanging modifiers. These are not the fun things to do; they are, in fact, quite boring. It is fun to write a book. It is sexy to tell friends you have done so. You will not find a publisher, however, unless you get the boring mechanics right.
While mechanics are the territory of copyeditors, who carefully comb every sentence for errors and omissions, they should also be the domain of writers. Copyediting is expensive. Although all publishers do have copyeditors on staff, the cleaner the manuscript in this respect, the more likely the publisher will be to accept the manuscript. If you send a final manuscript that is squeaky clean, the publisher will not only be able to get the book into print more quickly and inexpensively but also will feel very positively disposed toward you as an author, something that can serve you well in the future should you write another book.
It will be more difficult to deal with comments on your style. In fact, you may not be able to improve a manuscript that has been considered “flat,” “lacking in action,” “too synoptic,” or “too detailed.” If you are receiving comments like this, it is likely because the editor has found your content interesting but your writing “unprofessional,” “undeveloped,” or “amateurish.” In such cases, you might want to take some writing courses or hire a developmental editor to help you.
I recall with some amusement a young man in an English class who stated that his work was ready for publication although his English teacher did not like it. He, in turn, did not like it when he was told that the best thing he could do, if he really wanted to become a published writer, was to listen to his English teacher. Yes, I know, there are some fine examples of good writers who were unrecognized as such by their English teachers, among them, as noted above, the exceptionally talented William Faulkner. The likelihood that you are the next William Faulkner, though, is pretty low, so if you want to get published, listen to whatever experts are available to you, especially if one of them happens to be an English teacher.
Another author had a great book. She had self-published it with pretty good sales for a self-published book, i.e. a few hundred, but was not reaching the larger audience that she wanted to reach. I happened to know her and was willing to help her out by publishing it in a traditional fashion—a real gift because nearly no publisher will re-publish a self-published book. However, the last couple of chapters were really not very good. The book fizzled out before reaching those chapters, and the content of those chapters read as if the author needed to hurry up and tie up her story, a memoir, with the final ten years crammed into a chapter or two. They did not fit with the rest of the book and greatly detracted from the book as a whole. I won’t acquire a book that is not well written all the way to the end, so I made the suggestion that she rewrite or omit the last two chapters. She resented any “intrusion” into her book and suggested that our regular royalties, which are quite author-friendly, did not match the percentage she was getting from a self-published book (No kidding! Did she think traditional publishers donate their work?). Unless she could get all the profit from the book for herself, she thought she would just stay in the self-published mode. Her defensiveness seemed to be more than about the money; she clearly thought she had written a perfect book and was not about to change a word. So, we did not publish it. It remains self-published and continues to struggle with sales and renown.
Finding a developmental editor may have been her best way out, but she chose not to take it. You can fare differently. Consider hiring a developmental editor. Unlike copyeditors who focus on mechanics, developmental editors focus on style and content, on plot motivation and word choice. They also tend to have a sense of what will sell to agents, publishers, and readers. These are the things that make the difference between an award-winning writer and a run-of-the-mill writer and between a writer who gets published and one who does not. A good source of information about developmental editors and where to find them can be found through googling. Be sure to get references, though. There are many individuals passing themselves off as developmental editors who are not adequately experienced or adequately skilled. If an editor takes the time to mention in a rejection letter that you would benefit from a developmental editor, you might follow-up by asking for a recommendation. Many editors do know freelance developmental editors and can provide contact information. Remember, though, that just because a publisher recommends a developmental editor, it does not mean that your revised manuscript will be accepted for publication although you will greatly increase the chances of that. Whenever I provide contact information for a developmental editor (which I do only if the work has value, the author asks me, and the author has tried unsuccessfully to find help on his or her own), I make it very clear that while I will consider a re-submitted manuscript, I am making no guarantees about possible acceptance. The revised manuscript still has to pass the litmus test for quality.
Comments like the manuscript is “difficult to follow” or “the action is unmotivated” mean one thing: you have not exercised due diligence in getting other people to read and comment on your book prior to sending it to the publisher. Leaps in logic or gaps in plot are quickly discerned by a reader unfamiliar with the book. You are too close to the book to notice all the instances where these things occur. Therefore, round up friends and entice them to read the book and point out where they have difficulty following. These are the kinds of comments you want to receive from friends, not from potential publishers who might not otherwise reject the manuscript.
As for spelling, shame on you if you have submitted a manuscript with many spelling errors! After all, every computer has a spell checker. Use it! Nothing turns off an acquisitions editor more quickly than misspelled words. While some little things usually do slip through the cracks even with professional copyediting, spelling should not be one of them.
Revise Your Manuscript
If you can revise your manuscript on your own, do so. If you need friends to read the manuscript to find the gaps in your logic or presentation of information, ask them to do so. If you need help with grammar, spelling, punctuation, and other kinds of mechanics that even with the assistance of style manuals seem to be beyond you, then find a copyeditor to help. If you have trouble with character development, content, or style, hire a developmental editor to teach you and assist with the revision. If you hire help in revising your manuscript, learn from your helper so that next time you can do it yourself.
Why should you revise your manuscript when it will take time away from your search for a publisher? Because if your manuscript is weak, no matter how often you send it out, it will find its way right back to you. It will only stay somewhere else if you improve it to the point that it interests a potential publisher
Look for Another Publisher
If you have been rejected by one publisher, it is time to move on. What one publisher dislikes, another publisher may like. Before you do that, though, take to heart everything you have been told in the rejection letter (if you have been fortunate enough to receive input from the publisher), and improve your manuscript before sending it out again. This time, too, do some in-depth research to determine which other publisher might be the best fit. As I tell authors who are embarrassed that they are taking longer than expected to get their final manuscript delivered or galleys returned, take the time to do it right. Right is always better than fast. The same is true in revising your manuscript and sending it out again. Get the manuscript right! Get the publisher right! That is the formula for success
For more blog posts about B L Ham and this book, click HERE.
For more posts about publishing, click HERE.
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