The agony of waiting for acceptance or rejection

Well, my goodness, Bill.  Did they tell you why?  Something like, "Somebody licked the red off my candy and I don't want to read submissions tonight."  Or "I can only do two things today, and you're not one of them."  Surely such a quick rejection requires at least a 'how come?"  You spent a lot of time jumping through their hoops to submit it according to their requirements.  I would think they would let you down easy. 

MJ

Bill,
I went to the Fiery Seas site and after reading a ton of requirements I found this sentence:

Failure to follow these guidelines will result in unread submissions.

There were a lot of requirements, and it would be easy to over look one. Perhaps you should check your manuscript and see if you failed to follow one of their guidelines, because 9 minutes is just enough time to look something over for guideline omissions.

On the other hand, publishers say they will reject out of hand any submissions not meeting their requirements, so if this were the reason for Bill's rejection, I wonder why they even bothered to respond, or why, on doing so, they didn't say that was the reason.

I wonder if they have some kind of screening software that scans for key words. Example: "sparkly vampires." They know they don't want books about that, so they auto-reject any emails/queries containing the words "sparkly vampires."

{I'm not implying you wrote about sparkly vampires.}

Maybe you wrote on a topic that doesn't interest them for some reason, & the auto-scanner caught it.

This is what I'm thinking, Corra. The response came back about as fast as it takes to load up a 750KB DOC file and scan for given words. Nine minutes from input to reply has to be non-human.

One of the requirements had me put the genre and sub-genre in both the query letter and the name of the DOC file. That could have been the key that rejected it. Maybe they are full up with "Romance" and "Adventure" or "Romantic adventure".

Bill

Yesterday, I sent a chat message on Facebook to the publisher. Their response today was that they happened to be working on submissions when mine popped up in the email Inbox. They read the synopsis and decided it didn't fit what they were looking for.

I thought that was darn decent of them to give me a personal response. When I get other novels ready, I'll definitely submit to them again. They could have remained faceless and aloof, but they didn't.

Bill

Wow, Bill, that's hard to believe. I read the blurbs of some of their 'polished' novels and there wasn't one that didn't sound like a logistical mess. And, I might add, I wouldn't have bought them. That's my opinion anyway. Good luck with your next try and don't forget J.K. Rowling spent six years and was rejected by 9 publishers before Harry Potter was published.

When I was seeking work in philosophy, I'd get my share of rejections (and acceptances). One employer rejected me.  Both the university and I forgot I applied to it, so at the Convention (where the preliminary interviews take place), the university accepted me for the preliminary interview they had rejected me for, and chided me for not applying.  Then, I got the rejection letter from them.  Oh, well.  The rejection letter I will cherish the most was the one that began, "employment decisions are arbitrary, capricious, and subjective.  Ours is no exception.  We can't tell you why we rejected you, as you were highly qualified and would have been a fine addition to our faculty.  Good luck in finding a suitable position."  Like my character, I refrained from writing a reply suggesting they perform an anatomical impossibility.  As somebody said, anyone can, in this day and age, form a publishing house.  This is the era where ultimately, the readers will decide.  I don't always use marketing, but when I do, I use all the master keys and persuasion techniques I can remember.  Stay Hungry, my friends.

Doug:  Inspired by your story, I submitted to Fiery Seas.  I did do a little research on them, and as there was some possible scandal in their past, I was particularly interested in the review by one of their published authors, which was favorable.  So far, it's been over thirty minutes since I received my 'thank you and we are looking forward to reading your manuscript,' so your record is intact. Dagnee, you gave me hope when you said the ones they accept have blurbs that show logistical nightmares.  Mine is a mystery/time travel story, and by the time I was done with the first draft, my tenses were all messed up.  It's hard to keep track of characters who arrive in places before they do and have to kidnap their younger selves.  It's just to see what their response is, as the manuscript has only gone through my first review to take out obvious structural errors, make the pieces, written separately, fit together, punch up the dialogue, make sure the sentences are in logical order, that sort of thing. The confirmation letter said it will take ten to twelve weeks before a decision.  It might even be worth publishing by then. lol  Good luck with your other submissions.

Hey, Doug.  Thanks for the warning on the ProWritingAid.  Some times, the old-fashioned way (doing it yourself) is the best.  As to time paradoxes, tell me about it.  The characters are also concerned and fear they might lose their minds tracking their own comings and goings.  I put in the latest astrophysicist theory that there are fourteen constants that have to be in exact relationship for life to exist.  Try a factorial analysis of that, it's a 1 in a lot of zeros possibility for us to exist.  So have a time traveler tramp around and if he changes the littlest thing the smallest way, and...

There is also the possibility of backward causation, and you bringing about the very thing you were trying to avoid (like Skynet bringing about John Connor's mother meeting his father, and...).