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Now that I'm mostly clear of the thicket of filming (although not quite clear and braced for disaster at any moment), I'm sidling back into the mantle of writer and not "I am busy being a director full stop." Which means sending out submissions for good manuscripts that have been gathering dust while I didn't have time to research markets or go to the post office. This always has a quixotic, fatalistic aspect to it, and considering that I'm already feeling murderous, brooding, and otherwise disagreeable I can't say it's doing much for my semi-perpetual rage cloud.
Since I haven't had much luck with agents for The Sifting Floor, which is probably a little too niche for an agent while still big enough to be attractive to a publisher (I think), I'm moving toward a direct contact approach (possibly while still shopping around to agents). And of course, I'm starting at the highest level I think I could manage and then gradually revising down.
As I review the guidelines for publishers like DAW, I notice a change over the last few years: almost none of them want queries any more. They want full submissions. They want them by post. They want them exclusively for three to six months while they wait to read them.*
Dream on, assholes.
Leaving aside the cost of mailing a full manuscript right off the bat, which I understand might be an attempt to deter scores of "I'll just e-mail it to everyone!" authors, I am never, ever going to submit a book without the freedom to send it to whomever else I want to see it. This is work I do. It has value. In order for me to be able to do more of it, I have to be able to make a living off of it. I'm not going to send you a damn love letter and then wait by the phone sighing for six months. When I'm out of work, I'm not going to apply for one job and then wait six months before I apply for the next job.
In no industry anywhere does this fly. Actors and dancers and musicians audition for whoever they want to audition for. Visual artists shop their work around to whatever gallery they walk into; at best, they might leave a piece with someone for a couple of days while they decide whether to represent it. Where do these fucking publishers get off thinking this is acceptable? And what idiot writers are tolerating it?
I'd like to think nobody is. I'd like to think everyone is sim-subbing same as usual. But it seems to me there's a group of people at the top who have gotten a little too aristocratic, who have maybe forgotten who tills their fields.
* This is standard with short stories, but not with book-length works, for the simple reason that writers probably have several short stories they are sending around, but usually only one book at a time. Meanwhile, magazine publishers are usually working on hard issue deadlines whereas book publishers have more of a rolling deadline. There is not any reason in the world a book publisher needs exclusive consideration and a full submission right off the bat other than ego. This is why you do queries; it saves everybody time.
Since I haven't had much luck with agents for The Sifting Floor, which is probably a little too niche for an agent while still big enough to be attractive to a publisher (I think), I'm moving toward a direct contact approach (possibly while still shopping around to agents). And of course, I'm starting at the highest level I think I could manage and then gradually revising down.
As I review the guidelines for publishers like DAW, I notice a change over the last few years: almost none of them want queries any more. They want full submissions. They want them by post. They want them exclusively for three to six months while they wait to read them.*
Dream on, assholes.
Leaving aside the cost of mailing a full manuscript right off the bat, which I understand might be an attempt to deter scores of "I'll just e-mail it to everyone!" authors, I am never, ever going to submit a book without the freedom to send it to whomever else I want to see it. This is work I do. It has value. In order for me to be able to do more of it, I have to be able to make a living off of it. I'm not going to send you a damn love letter and then wait by the phone sighing for six months. When I'm out of work, I'm not going to apply for one job and then wait six months before I apply for the next job.
In no industry anywhere does this fly. Actors and dancers and musicians audition for whoever they want to audition for. Visual artists shop their work around to whatever gallery they walk into; at best, they might leave a piece with someone for a couple of days while they decide whether to represent it. Where do these fucking publishers get off thinking this is acceptable? And what idiot writers are tolerating it?
I'd like to think nobody is. I'd like to think everyone is sim-subbing same as usual. But it seems to me there's a group of people at the top who have gotten a little too aristocratic, who have maybe forgotten who tills their fields.
* This is standard with short stories, but not with book-length works, for the simple reason that writers probably have several short stories they are sending around, but usually only one book at a time. Meanwhile, magazine publishers are usually working on hard issue deadlines whereas book publishers have more of a rolling deadline. There is not any reason in the world a book publisher needs exclusive consideration and a full submission right off the bat other than ego. This is why you do queries; it saves everybody time.
