I'm quite confident in saying that SPI gets ten submissions and queries a week via email and snailmail. Then there are the hand delivered manuscripts, a fair amount. There are telephone queires, which I'm not fond of. Easily we look at 600 or more possible projects on a yearly basis.
Here's what gets my attention. Brevity. Accuracy. Correct spelling. I look at all inquires. I cull most quickly. You've got ten or fifteen seconds to attract further interest. You've got 50 to 100 words to turn that brief interest into curiosity. I ask to see a manuscript maybe once or twice a month.
So, if you do the math, on a yearly basis, you have a twelvish to twenty-fourish chance out of 600 or more competitors for my attention.
I become disinterested if the query looks like it is going to waste time getting to the point, which is, can Savage Press make some money publishing this book? The point is also, would Savage Press be proud to publish this book? The point is also, would publishing this book make a real contribution to the world? There's lots of good reasons to publish a book. It is the writer's job to make me see the point and, most writer's don't like this fact, it is their (or their agent's or publicist's) job to do it quickly.
It is, I believe, always in the writer's best interest to invest a lot of time and energy and thought and compassion in their queries to publishers.
1 comment:
A couple of additional thoughts: 1.) I have to turn down a lot of GOOD ideas. We only publish a few books a year. 2.) Being turned down by a publisher is almost always more of a comment on the publisher than the submitter. I can say it more simply: "A turn-down says more about the publisher than the project."
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