Blogs by Todd Cheney
My recent correspondence with EDGE
9/22/2004 12:13:45 PM
I submitted some sample chapter to EDGE of Canada. Last Friday I received their rejection letter, which led to the following exchange:
----- Original Message -----
> From: Todd Cheney
> To: kimberly.hadespublications.com
> Sent: Saturday, September 18, 2004 3:47 PM
> Subject: Submissions
>
>
> Hello Kimberly,
>
> I am considering sending you another work. But first I am interested to know
> how many novels/short stories/plays or screenplays you personally (Kimberly
> Gammon) have written. I want to know about published and unpublished works.
> Titles will suffice, I don't need to know about plots.
>
> It's a strange phenomenon in the publishing industry that many of the
> decision-makers are not themselves writers, and never have been writers.
> While some might call such an alignment a conflict of interest, I propose
> that it is the other way around. I can understand if you have a psuedonym,
> but I have been able to find no published works by you, and so, I cannot
> trust your opinion on my work (sorry!).
>
> At the risk of wasting your time, I'd like to comment that your company is
> probably the most personal I've encountered in a long time. You at least
> succeeded in proving so far that you are not the ivory tower of arrogance
> that so many other publishers are. Their attitude is really putting me off
> from reading any books at all.
>
> Unfortunately, I will no longer consider you as a potential publisher for my
> works unless I can get a clear answer on this.
>
> Todd Cheney
>From: "Science Fiction & Fantasy - Edge/Tesseract (publisher)"
>To:
>Subject: Re: Submissions
>Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 10:58:55 -0600
>
>Dear sir,
>
>Thank you for your interest in our publishing house. Have you looked at our web site? Have you been reading our MMU's? If so, you must already have a very good idea of the successes we have had. However, I do understand your concern and I assume your opinions are based on qualifications garnered during your employment in the publishing industry (although I can not find any references on the web). Ah well.
>
>Best of luck with your career.
>
>Cheers,
>Brian Hades, Publisher
>
Sorry to say that you completely missed the point. Here is what I really meant to say: People who are in control of the acquisitions decisions at your company should probably have at least a general idea what it's like to be a writer themselves. Sympathy for the writing cause seems like not enough (and almost always comes off as insincere). How can anyone possibly understand what it's like to get rejection letters unless they've gotten them? Of course they can't.
Now you'll probably fall back on something like: "It's just a business decsion. You shouldn't take it personally." Of course I should. Writing is a very personal thing. Can you say it isn't? If writing a novel with depth, characterization and scope were simply a business decision, then the writer of that novel will produce something formulaic, boring and unenlightening, something that's directed purely at making a buck, and unintelligent to boot. Readers will see through that like a cellophane wall. After all, a writer spends a lot of time with his or her characters, gets to know them, all the while knowing that those characters are a part of the writer's pshyce extended onto the page, that they represent, in whatever small way, said writer's experiences, opinions and craftsmanship distilled into a readable format with possible entertainment value. I understand that it's easier for you to look at "the numbers" and to tout your awards and accomplishments. But no matter how you cut it, in the end, writing is a personal venture by an individual to enlighten, broaden horizons, or otherwise create something enjoyable for other people.
But as I can see, all I've said is falling on deaf ears. I feel like even writing this to you is a waste of my time. Unfortunately, I believe in writing and what it can bring people too much to give up just because you don't "get it."
TC
-------------------------------------------------------
WHEW! Now that you've read --all that--, it should be apparent to you that they made no attempt to answer my original question. Also, they implied that in order to be 'right' (in a universal sense, mind you) about what's happening in the publishing industry regarding the publication of new books, I had to have worked in the industry! (I know, that's the same thing I said in the original message, but here's the kicker: I don't have the power to make those decisions for them, i.e. whether or not to publish the book. They do. Can you not agree that anyone with the POWER to decide to publish a book, and make it available for sale, should also understand in a very personal and upfront way what it's like to craft such a work, and subsequently be ignored and written off as a 'nobody?')
I understand their reasoning is probably something like this: "Even if we publish this book, it won't sell, because you are not a known quantity. First you must have accolades taller than your head, then, we will publish you because only people who win awards and have short stories published deserve it and will get their books sold."
Of course! Why didn't I see it before? It's all up to me to become a *star* first, and then I'll get books sold for them. That's not to mention that virtually every other publisher or magazine will say the same thing. You see, publishers don't actually care about the quality of your work except to the extent that it will close the sale in the reader's mind. I sort of have the feeling that if readers were ready to accept bad grammar, syntax, punctuation out of place, and unlikeable characters/plot/description, publishers would go along, as long as they made the money. For the best example of what I'm actually talking about, look up a published book written by someone who is already a celebrity, and not because they started out as writers, or had any experience in that area. Most of those are horrid. No one's going to remember that sort of book even ten years from now.
All EDGE succeeded in doing was proving my original assumption: Most book publishers are in it for the money and seek only to leech off of the *real* forces in the industry--the writers.
TC
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