Hey mizkit and shadowhwk!

[annathepiper]

So today I got back the postcard that I had included in the packet I sent off to Tor for Faerie Blood. It says on it, "Faerie Blood received 6/3/04". I am bemused. Does this mean that somebody has only just now gotten around to finding it in the slush pile? Just 'cause I sent the thing off on 4/27, which means it's spent the entire month of May plus a few extra days' change idling at Tor.

Glad to know the postcard thing does actually work. :)

(Posting this outside the Writing filter for no apparent reason, and just because I feel like it.)

Comments

[gerimaple.livejournal.com]

it's there. it's in progress. it's a start.

*hugs*

[shadowhwk.livejournal.com]

Probably what that means is that, yeah, someone just recently actually opened the package it was in.

And hey, that's more response than *I've* gotten out of Tor, so congrats.

[annathepiper]

*giggle* Well, I DID include the self-addressed, stamped postcard as their web page suggested... so hey. I figure it's a good use for all the spare photo cards that Dara and I have gotten from assorted wildlife charities.

Marf. Now to wait another six months for somebody to actually send me the rejection letter. ;P :)

[avram]

Yes, it’s very very possible that it’s been sitting there unread. Tor gets a lot of submissions.

[seimaisin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it probably just got opened. One of the ladies in my writers group has an agent; her entire six month contract period went by without any word from any of the places they'd sent the manuscript out to, and when she was about ready to get out of her contract, they finally heard that the editor from Harlequin had just gotten around to looking at it. Time moves differently in publishing worlds, I think. But, you got a response, which is a lot better than a lot of folks do! :)

By the way, would you be willing to put me in the writing filter? I'm always interested in reading about others' writing careers, as I'm trying to kick my own in the ass. :)

[annathepiper]

Well, I got back the "yes, we got your manuscript" postcard that I included in my manuscript packet by Tor's web page's own suggestion, which is not quite as cool as an actual response to the manuscript. ;) But!

And yeah--I'm aware of the time lag in the publishing world! I'm just curious as to why it takes so long, I think. And mizkit and shadowhwk tell me that Tor is slower than many.

And into the filter you've gone! ^_^

[annathepiper]

Must! Not! Fret! *giggle*

And work on the two books I've got. Though I'm also thinking I may have to do a third unrelated book off my ideas list when the next Nanowrimo rolls around, the urge to work on Faerie Blood's first sequel notwithstanding--it'd be nice to have three books I can start sending around to publishers, and I can't work on Lament of the Dove for Nanowrimo as it's already a work in progress. :)

*hugs*

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

It takes so long because slush is the very last thing on the very long list of things to do that editors and editor's assistants deal with every day. And because Tor, for example, gets more than 5000 unsolicited submissions a year, which is what, like 2.5ish submissions for every working hour of the year? So if there are 20 new submissions a day, and looking at slush is the very, very last thing you do, when the rest of your work (meetings, editing authors you've already bought, calming authors you've already bought down, more meetings, convincing somebody you should buy this book, whatever jillionteen other things they do) is done, if you get through five of them before you have to go catch your train home, then, well, you got 25% of today's pile done, but tomorrow there's going to be another 20 submissions, and by the end of the week you've read 25 submissions, which isn't bad, but you've had 100 come in. By the end of the month, you've read a hundred, but 400 have come in. And slush isn't important (profitable?) enough to hire somebody to deal *just* with it.

It all makes a certain kind of macabre sense. Not that it makes me feel any better about not having heard about Angles after nine months. :P

[annathepiper]

Thanks for spelling this out, babe! With that sort of explanation, it does actually begin to make sense--at least, the part about why it takes so long to get to a particular manuscript on the slush pile.

Hrmm. So roughly working this out... suppose that on the first day of the month you get 20 manuscripts. You make it through five of them that particular day. But that means you have 15 more to get through! And it'll be another three days before you're able to do that, so by day 5, you're only just then getting to day 2's submissions. Doing the math, I work out that over the course of a month, you'd work through roughly a week's worth of manuscripts. Which would then mean, roughly, that you'd need three months at least to work through a month's worth of manuscripts!

With numbers like that I'm actually kind of impressed that it only took a month and change to get to mine. ;)

But all of this kind of sounds like it applies just to Tor actually getting around to opening the submission, at least enough to go "Oh hey, there's a postcard in here, let's drop that in the mail to acknowledge receipt of this one."

So as of six days ago, somebody opened the packet, found the card, and sent it. What happens next? Given what you and Sarah have said about Tor's lag in response time, I must assume that my submission has gone to some other queue to actually get looked at now that it's been opened?

[annathepiper]

Oh, I know they get hammered with submissions. :) The inevitable consequence of being one of the publishers who'll take unsolicited manuscripts from people without agents!

The part that interests me at this point is learning what actually happens when a manuscript gets to a publisher. See my answer to mizkit further down on this thread. ^_^

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Well, given what I saw of Tor's office, yeah, basically what's happened is your manuscript has been moved from here (http://mizkit.com/misc/slush02.jpg) or here (http://mizkit.com/misc/slush01.jpg) (those are very, very anemic Tor slushpile pictures taken last September--PNH's assistant had just finished killing the slush, and there probably weren't more than a hundred submissions hanging around that day) to... I don't have a picture of what the editor and editor assistant desks look like. Piles And Piles Of Paper. To somebody's desk. Or beside their desk, piled on the floor. Where it will, yeah, go through the whole wait all over again.

And then what will happen is one of two things. Either the editor's assistant/intern who is reading it will not be interested, in which case you'll get a rejection letter, /or/ she *will* like it, and she'll say to her boss, "You should look at this one," and then it goes in PNH's to-be-read pile, and once more, the wait begins. But you won't know about that part, because the intern/assistant won't tell you it's been passed on to a higher authority. It'll just be more months of waiting.

It took... *counts* ... 5 months for Tor to reject Heart of Stone, which was a requested manuscript. So far they've had Angles, another requested manuscript, for 9 months. And what happens *there* is they say, "Please send your manuscript," and you do, and then they give it to what they call a first reader, or maybe a couple of first readers, who are interns or assistants or a something else, and they read the whole book and say to the editor, "Yes, you should read this one, it actually is good," or, "No, it fell apart after chapter three, don't bother."

And *then*, *finally*, the editor reads it. When he gets a chance. And THEN, if HE likes it, he has to go convince everybody else in the office that they really should spend the money on this book, and other people read it, and there are marketing meetings and cost/value discussions and if you are very, very lucky, at the end of it all, somebody calls you up and tells you, "We'd like to buy your book."

God, I think I'm exhausted now. :)

[annathepiper]

*reads through What Happens At a Publishing Company 101*

Wow. I feel enlightened now. :) And simultaneously impressed and daunted! Thanks, hon!

I have visions of the cast of Faerie Blood all loitering in the hallway while they wait. Paper airplanes and rubber-band-shooting galore and "What do you MEAN we have to camp out here for six months?!" ^_^

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Well, the cast of FB has plenty of company, at least. :) Anyway, all of that is why they say longer is better, but I tend to think that longer is just longer. :)

[annathepiper]

I have visions of the casts of assorted books getting into tag-team poker tournaments while they're waiting! And villains from two or three different novels nefariously plotting in the corner to ambush the cadre of handsome, dashing heroes who are lounging in careless, rakishly disheveled ways on the hallway chairs. Assorted pets who belong to assorted protagonists are wandering around begging for treats, and there are assorted earnest young people in velvet school robes and stripey scarves who look suspiciously like they belong at Hogwarts trying VERY HARD to pretend they're not actually FROM Hogwarts.

At one end of the hallway, representatives of three different tribes of elves, none of whom are actually calling themselves "elves" but all of whom have the requisite pointy ears, big eyes, and irritatingly lofty demeanor towards all things human, are arguing with each other about the nature of each other's races. And a fourth elven representative is telling them, rolling exquisite starlit eyes, "Oh for fuck's sake, you're ELVES, people. Get over it!"

Werewolves are checking their watches to make sure they're not going to change at a very inopportune time. Vampires are hiding in the nearest storage closet until the sun goes down, and a young blonde woman with shiny lip gloss is lurking just beside the closet door, with a pointy wooden stick in her hand and an expectant gleam in her eye.

And EVERYBODY is being extremely respectful of the dragon waiting outside, whose presence is registered only by the occasional deep rumble and a huge gleaming eye peering in through the window.

"So!" pipes a perky heroine, whose spunk and heart are destined to win her through dire peril and get her smooched by that gorgeous fellow with the half-unbuttoned shirt and the five-o-clock shadow. "Anybody up for Twister?"

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

You have way, *way* too much time on your hands. *laugh*!

[annathepiper]

On the contrary--if I had that, I'd have written three books, mastered three instruments, and two varieties of Gaelic by now. ;D

However, I do get extremely bored at work.

[chamois-shimi.livejournal.com]

*laugh*!!

If I knew anyone in the publishing business, I'd give them a link to this just for the laugh. ;)

[annathepiper]

Glad to have provoked a giggle. ^_^