(no subject)

[mrissa]

It was misting when I took the pup for a walk. There's a stand of poplars across the street from the park that's the most gorgeous gold, all in a bunch, and almost all the sumac by the lake is red now. One of the neighbors' trees along the way has leaves so dark they're that black-burgundy. We scrunched along the unpaved path where you can't see the lake in the summer, but you can now.

I got back to my first rejection on Thermionic Night.

Let me clarify: I got back to a form rejection on TN from an editor who had given me a nice, encouraging personal rejection on Reprogramming, which is a worse book in every regard.

(That is, I assume it was from that editor, as that was the editor the manuscript was addressed to. With a form reject, you never know who's actually clapped eyes on the blessed thing.)

Well. I intended to go to the post office tomorrow morning anyway.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I know it's "just not done," but I am kind of amazed that people just don't submit their novel to multiple editors at the same time.

I know, what happens if two publishes say "yes"? But 1) how likely is that to happen, and 2) that's what I've learned to call a "high class problem."

I shotgun my op ed pieces all the time. Only once did it bite me. All the rest of the times: it just got things published more timely.

B

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think mostly you don't see fiction writers doing this because there's more of a sense that it isn't done, so if people hear about it, there's more stigma. It's not a high-class problem if people don't want to work with you on a difficult-to-place later book because they got burned last time. Most of us want to write more than one book, and have no guarantees that the editor who buys our first novel will always buy our later ones. Also, as much as everybody has an opinion, it's my impression that novels are even more a buyer's market than op eds.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"...it's my impression that novels are even more a buyer's market than op eds."

I think evidence is mixed. The op editor of the New York Times once told me that he gets hundreds of submissions per day. Presumably the numbers are the same for the other premiere outlets: The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and USA Today. The dozens of second-tier newspapers (this (http://www.infoplease.com/ipea/A0004420.html) list is two years old, but it's probably still accurate) get less, but there a lot of papers. Most second tier papers don't take op eds unless they are either 1) by a local, or 2) have a local angle.

On the other hand, each newspaper publishes something like two or three op eds per day.

In 2004, when I was trying, I got a lot (http://www.schneier.com/essays.html) of op eds published in newspapers around the country. But I never broke into the big three: Times, Journal, Post. The only one time I had something accepted by The Washington Post, it had already been accepted by The International Herald Tribune...which is an argument for not submitting simultaneously. But, as I said, it felt like a high class problem to have.

B