Authors will often refer to the submission and rejection process as a crapshoot. For those unfamiliar with the term, craps is a dice game of chance. A crapshoot is a roll of the dice, and it’s come to mean a gamble with random and uncontrollable results.
You’ll probably have heard, more than once, that getting a publisher interested in your work is a process that involves a lot of random chance and a lot of luck. That it depends on who happens to pick up your query or your manuscript off the pile, the mood of that reader on that particular day, how many stories like yours have come in lately, what the weather is like, what the person had for breakfast…
You might notice here that responsibility for the success or rejection of your manuscript is attributed to a lot of factors, but that one is conspicuously absent: You.
It’s human nature, I think, to need closure, to need reasons for things, and to ascribe things to chance and forces beyond our control when we don’t and can’t know the real reasons behind them. But, honestly, publishers and editors do have reasons behind their actions, even if those reasons can’t be fathomed from a generic form-letter rejection slip.
Maybe your submission doesn’t fit the flavor of the publication or the press you’ve submitted to. Maybe they feel the market is saturated with your concept already—or, conversely, maybe it’s so far out there that they’re unwilling to take a chance on it.
Notice that I’m not saying anywhere in here that your manuscript must automatically have been bad. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, as the saying goes, and this is true for publishing houses, anthologies and magazines as well. Different people like different things. Different places are looking for different things. What doesn’t fit at one may fit perfectly at another.
Yes, it’s also true that different submissions editors at the same place may have slightly differing concepts of what they’re supposed to be looking for, but I don’t entirely buy the ‘random’ element there either; ultimately they’re still looking for things that fit the same kinds of slots.
I’m not saying that if one person rejects it, it must be bad, or unsellable, or anything like that. I’m not.
I’m saying that it doesn’t make it random. I’m saying it’s not a crapshoot. It’s a matter of writing quality, of originality, and ultimately of fit.
Maybe there’s an element of chance involved in getting your manuscript onto the desk of the one editor or publisher with a soft spot for the sort of thing you write. I’ll grant you that. But whether they like it or not isn’t going to have anything to do with mood, breakfast, the morning commute, or the weather out the window.
And remember, you’re not aiming your vampire unicorn story at the one editor with the soft spot for vampiric unicorns. You’re aiming it at all readers of a genre, a press, or a publication. Even if that one reader likes it, if she doesn’t think her readers are going to like it, it’s going to get a rejection all the same.
Calling it a crapshoot is a way to avoid personal responsibility. It’s a way to say, “It’s all on their end,” instead of saying, “My manuscript, for whatever reason, wasn’t what they were looking for.” Once you take that responsibility, you have more power and more options. You can deliberately write something that’s more to the taste of a particular venue, or you can move on and submit elsewhere, to people who might be looking for something that’s more like what you’ve already got.
Since it’s not a game of random chance, there are ways to better your odds:
– Write well, write cleanly, and copyedit. The cleaner the manuscript, the better an impression you’ll make. Hire an editor, if you can. A professional editor makes a huge difference, and the investment you put into polishing your work will be more than worth it in the long run. But even if you can’t hire an editor, at least get someone else to check it over for continuity, for typos and punctuation. I can’t stress enough, the cleaner the manuscript, the better your chances. Three typos and a misused apostrophe all on the first page will make a poor impression, no matter how good or creative your idea is.
– Make your opening as strong as you can. Grab the reader and keep them reading. A reader who’s bought the book has spent money on it and is invested, and will give a slow opening more of a chance. Submissions editors have nothing invested, and won’t keep going past the first paragraph, or the first page, if your writing doesn’t provide a compelling reason to. Don’t waste that space with backstory, description, or the weather. Don’t warm up slowly. They won’t hang on until page 50 for the good stuff. It needs to be that good on page 1. It needs to be that good on the first line.
– Do your research. If you’re submitting short stories to magazines, read the magazines. There’s no better way to get a feel for what they print and, by obvious extension, what they look for. If you’re submitting a novel, look at the backlist for the publishing house. Make sure they publish the kind of thing you’re sending them.
Getting published isn’t random chance. If you take responsibility, if you do your research and if you prepare, you can always improve your odds.
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