When I first started submitting stories and articles for
publication, I got rejected – a lot- but some of those rejections were so
encouraging that they made me feel almost as elated as I would have been had
they been acceptance letters.
The operative word is almost.
There are three different types of rejection letters
you are most likely to get back with your submitted manuscript. Sometimes you
might not receive any reply at all; guidelines might tell you to assume
rejection if you haven’t heard from them in X amount of time. This
seems especially the case with e-submissions in the 21st century.
E-submissions have almost rendered moot the practice of trudging to the post
office to mail a manuscript and receiving your self addressed stamped envelope
a few weeks or months later, but there are still journals and publishers and
agents who request snail mail and the replies you should expect to get back
from them generally fall into three camps:
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1) The “We Don’t Want Any” letter
It’s succinct and void of any indication that your
submission was ever read. It basically says: “This does not meet our
needs at the present time.”
“Okay, so what do you need and when will you need it?” Yes,
you might start talking to yourself after a few of these. Providing you’re not
blindly sending sci-fi stories to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and feel you
know your market well, after a few of these, you might want to get a review
from a fresh pair of eyes, someone who is not your best friend from high school
or a relative, someone who is qualified to give constructive criticism. Try the
same story on other magazines. Send other stories to the same magazine. Editors
change.
2) The “We Don’t Want Any” letter but with actual
handwriting
Well, maybe not actual handwriting in the age of
e-everything, but something personal, a salutation, “thanks for submitting to
us” or “I enjoyed reading this” is a definite step up from “this does not meet
our needs, yada yada.” If it comes from a high profile magazine, you might even
want to frame it (I have!), at least until you get that coveted acceptance
letter or a rejection letter that is the closest thing to an acceptance letter
which is:
3) The “We Don’t Really Want This, BUT…” letter
The editor or agent addresses you personally in this
letter and might suggest that she’d be willing to take another look if you did
a rewrite (this led to a published essay in The Washington Post) or invites you
to “submit something else you might have handy.” Get to work! And by all means,
feel free to frame it. You can then use that frame for your first acceptance
letter, your first check, your first book contract, your first fan letter, all
things you are now working toward. No doesn’t necessarily mean no. A lot of
times it just means “try harder.”
Susan Israel lives in Connecticut with her beloved dog, but New York City lives in her heart and mind. Her first novel, OVER MY LIVE BODY, was published by The Story Plant in 2014. A graduate of Yale College, her fiction has been published in Other Voices, Hawaii Review and Vignette, and she has written for magazines, websites and newspapers, including Glamour, Girls Life, Ladies Home Journal and The Washington Post. She’s currently at work on the third book in the Delilah Price series.
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1 Comments
Found this posting to be quite interesting. It gives a look into authors' plights.
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