I’d like to ask YOU for something in 2013. Improve the way you evaluate us. I know that you see a lot junk every year. I also know that you don’t see a lot of what you’re looking for because you’ve driven it away.

It’s fine and well to express these noble sentiments about the kinds of dedicated super producers you’d like to make contact with, but your submission and feedback processes send us a different message. They tell us to go away if we’re not part of the in-crowd.

Many who fit your mold were trying to reach you for a very long time. We’re not trying so hard anymore because we don’t have to. We lack perks, but our passion remains intact and we’ll keep going without the blessing of powers allegedly greater than ourselves.

Thanks for the article and Justin Oldham, thanks for that magnificent comment.

How I wish there were more fiction editors profiled and asked here! We fiction writers are always looking for someone who’ll buy “outside the lines,” and not only is it harder to find those people but it’s almost impossible to get to them without an agent—which is harder to get than ever now, too. We’ve been hearing for a long, long time about “great books” being able to find agents who’ll champion them and houses who’ll publish them, but here in the trenches, that’s not our experience at all.

How extraordinary that 3 writers made frank, honest comments and 2 put their names to them publicly. It’s possible that you editors are not the problem, but that the clogged filter is the agents who want blockbuster genre writing or skip it.

Everyone says what you say, but without the agent or some magical “direct” contact we are left in a permanent state of frustration. And that’s why self-publishing is strangling your future and not really doing much for ours, either. I’m a writer, not a publishing house. I have an ms of narrative non-fiction, one of literary fiction, and I’m finishing a thriller. Editors don’t like that, admit it. They want series of sameness.

So, effectively, I’d love to go to your slush pile, but those of us with experience know where slush pile submissions end up, so where’s the future? Why do I keep doing it?

IMHO, most publishing houses seem to be looking for a product with name recognition or one that can be made into a series (think Harry Potter). My own 120 page nonfiction masterpiece, Selling Outside the Square is about thinking outside the limitations – so I am marketing it on Facebook through social media sites.

I understand that a coming trend in publishing is in e-plays. As an award-winning playwright I hope this is true. My play was written to pressure and persuade a Governor to grant posthumous pardons to two Irish Immigrants that had been wrongly hanged and dissected in Massachusetts in 1806. It succeeded and is the first play to do so. It was performed six times but cast of 33 (mainly witnesses)makes it difficult…but high schools consider it a lesson in regional history about prejudice discrimination fear and hate of the Irish in the early eighteenth century in Massachusetts. My play was based on the actual trial testimony of 1806.

In e-play form it could be read as well as performed.

I hate ebooks. I hope they disappear quickly for the fad they are.

I want a publisher and agent who I can have a friendly chat to and ask questions and not have them worrying about how much money they can get from my work. Writers are not prostitutes.

If the slush piles are getting too high, stop accepting unsolicited material, only go through agents.

I think I might give up. Publishers have made it too hard for decent writers to get a break. I feel like all they want is the next Twilight money maker. It’s very disappointing and disheartening to always be rejected. It’s a shame since I have a lot of great ideas that no one will ever see.

I’m with Justin, and Janny (thank you both!) and on far too many days I’m with Olivia and ready to give up. How many rejections of good, solid story-telling must I face before realizing the illustrious gatekeepers aren’t interested in anything but the next blockbuster – which many of these editors admit they have no way of defining in advance?

At this stage of my career and life, self-publishing is not for me. I don’t the additional hours and energy necessary to do it well. And IMHO, far too many writers turn to self-pub out of frustration due to the issues mentioned here and then DON’T do it well. Sloppy work makes it that much harder for those of us who do try to be excellent.

Onward, sadder and wiser every day, with every rejection.

Andrew Lownie

I would like someone to read my true international love story entitled The Red Silk Robe it is of course, love, death, intrigue,revenge,escape, final illegal entry into the US with two small sons, and survival..   I need help to publicize it..Julia Cynthia Kent.

I confess to being ambivalent about both editors and agents. Having had five books published by trade publishers with a sixth one due out later this year or early next, I am perfectly capable of getting a book proposal accepted without an agent. But I also know that without an agent I cannot have access to the major publishing houses with better advances and, more importantly, marketing clout needed to get a book enough visibility to sell well. Agents have gone from being sales facilitators to gate keepers for editors and sometimes even the editors themselves.

On the other hand, when I see self-published dreck like Fifty Shades of Gray going viral and then mainstream, I wonder where publishing is going. The e-technology has enabled a flood of even worse writing than that to inundate the marketplace. Not a rosy scenario either way.

Despite all the lofty claims by various editors for inspired manuscripts that tell a compelling and vivid story, book publishing is a business and the business is to sell books. Each of the editors has a boss, who is responsible to another boss, who is responsible to shareholders, who are interested in return on investment. This is business and not art. Editors “want” what sells. Precious little of that is fiction.

Instead of responding to the “wants” of editors, we fiction writers are artists and as such have a larger calling. We must write what we need to write, tell the story each of us needs to tell, reveal in the telling the personal truth that brings us to the blank paper each day. The obligation of an artist cannot conform to the vicissitudes of a popular sentiment that editors deem marketable. An artist has a vision. An artist leads and never follows.

Do not look for validation from an agent, an editor, or a publishing house. Do the work and promote it however you can. Self publish, e-book, print on demand; it does not matter. What is important is that you maintain your artistic vision, refine it, and share it with others. The journey is the destination. The process is the validation. Let the accolades follow.

I agree with so many of the above posts, and I love John Edward White’s suggestion that fiction writers must have the courage to take the lead and find other approaches to publishing our stories. I was so lucky - I didn’t know how lucky - about 11 years ago, to find publishers (at first, small indie publishers) willing to take on literary fiction—even novellas! Now, it’s clear that to continue to write what I wish to write, and what’s in me to write, I have to find other paths: micro-presses for fiction, online journals for both fiction and poetry, and e-books. I’m starting to believe that this is a much headier and more interesting path than the one of traditional trade publishing, where, as most of you mention, editors have little leeway to find books they actually love or care about, and have to toe the line in order to keep their jobs.

I’m not sure what to think when someone asks for literary fiction with a commercial fiction-like plot instead of one in which “nothing happens.”

Sometimes, more is happening in that “nothing” than is happening in a (blockbuster!) story about an unstoppable train that keeps going and going and going and going and maybe it will, maybe it won’t smash into something.

I have completed my first novel and on to the second in the series which is both fiction and non-fiction (where necessary information has to be added for the time line) and it has been rejected by quite a few agents and one or two publishers without any feedback. Maybe I am being naive to expect at least a line or two that explains its consignment to the pile of ‘non starters’. After all I have read many a book myself, up to the first few chapters, where I then feel I have some reader feedback for the author at least. How do we know where we stand if we are rejected out of hand? If there is enough time and effort put into an email of rejection, surely a few words of advice or reasoning would’nt be too much to ask?

Olivia hates ebooks and wishes they’d disappear but I believe there’s room for all. I’m writting my third novel and have a fourth waiting. I enjoy writing, I enjoy my stories but agents and publishers don’t. I spent more time writing synopsis than actual books. Sum up your book in ten words or less they say! Tell us about yourself. We’d like to know your background! I spent a year writing 80,000 words then revising, rewriting and polishing my work until it shone, and I’m suppose to sum it up in ten words or less. Why do they want to know anything about me? I have a phD in esoteric anthropology, a doctorate in useless information and I’m working on my Masters in frankly-my-dear-I-don’t-give-a-damn! But how all that relates to my paranorml, mystery, romance with a liberal sprinkling of humour thrown in, I don’t know. I realize agents and publishers have a lot of sifting through to do and they ask these questions to speed up the process, but I got fed-up. My books are now on ebooks. I say books because now I’m doing what I love doing: writing stories. So no Olivia, I do not long for the end of the ebook fade. I say there’s room out there for every one – even me!

Fine writing, compelling storytelling, substance, seriousness of purpose, and an ability to connect with an audience—these things take a long time, maybe even most of a lifetime, to develop. Work at them. Meanwhile, exercise restraint while offloading responsibility for your failure.

As a voracious reader and freelance editor since well before the invention of the Internet, I feel obliged to point out that the lack of feedback on rejected queries and manuscripts is even older than I am. Literary agents and acquisitions editors have always received dozens (sometimes hundreds)of submissions for every one they accept. They simply don’t have time to provide feedback on everything. New technologies make it easier for people to write and submit but a human can only do so much reading and writing in a day.

There is a reason why most agents want one-page queries (usually via e-mail or web form these days): it’s easy to skim the three or four paragraphs and simply delete the rejected ones: that is, the ones that don’t match what the agent has asked for, seem poorly written, are a poor match to the current market (e.g., 3000-page personal theories about “life, the universe and everything”). In the next phase, the agent goes through the books that are publishable on their merits but not necessarily economically viable in the current market, and tries to suss out the few with the best chances of selling to a publisher. Then it’s down to requesting and reading the full manuscripts, hoping to find one which is a) good, b) saleable, c) by an author one wants to represent, and d) which is likely to earn enough to also cover the time spent dealing with all the others. The process is similar at a publisher’s, though there the selling will be to the bean-counters and marketing people.

The times an agent or publisher will provide feedback are few, and mainly (one hopes) helpful ones to authors under consideration, or kind “we like it but it’s not for us at this time—keep writing” e-mails to let writers know the rejection was for business reasons, not because the work was bad. A web search will turn up some notable exceptions, though—the rare piece of guidance for a rewrite before resubmission, and the not-so-rare nasty letter of the “RTF guidelines, you moron” variety.

Given that (though I am a fast reader for fun) it takes me a full workday to read an average manuscript thoughtfully and write notes of constructive criticism on how to improve it, I don’t think one can expect that service to be offered gratis by anyone who handles 30-100 queries a week and reads perhaps a dozen manuscripts as well as attending meetings, doing paperwork, etc.

By the way, having explored quite a few agent web sites and blogs, it seems clear most of them are having almost as hard a time making a living as the authors and publishing people. This has always been a precarious kind of business for everyone concerned. The labour is enormous and the chances of major profits are slim (unless we stick to the kind of hackwork most of us would die sooner than do) so unless we love the work for its own sake, we’d be better off doing almost anything else.

Somehow, though I’ve know this for ages, I’m still writing and editing…and regretfully declining to provide detailed feedback for free.

I published my first book in 1984, and for the past quarter-century I have heard exactly the same things in almost exactly the same words from editors. I’m sure they all get tired of repeating themselves. The surest way to find an agent and publisher is to write a really good book, and that means you must be a really good writer who has studied the market. I write for the love it, yes, but I also need to make some kind of living even it’s at the poverty level. If one wants to write 80,000 words on contemplating your navel, fine, but don’t expect an agent or editor or reader to care. These days authors have options that I didn’t have. I had to know the market; I had to write good, forceful, grammatical sentences, with all the words spelled correctly, and I had to develop three-dimensional characters to have a hope of finding an agent. Now one can forego the agent and publishing house and download your work as an ebook. I still believe that good writing, a strong plot, and a compelling narrative are essential however you choose to sell your work; otherwise you never sell your book to anybody but your friends and family. So the editors are right: a good book will sell. They just don’t always know what will sell and what won’t. If you think your book has bestselling potential and was overlooked, then publish it yourself. You might be right and all those editors and agents who rejected it are wrong. What do you have to lose?

Dear D. R. Meredith, I might be sticking my neck out here and guessing, but since you mentioned 80,000 words, as did I, I’m assuming that you are referring to me. I have to confess to contemplating my navel periodically, and a mighty fine navel it is. However, I think you got the wrong impression. I am not critical of agents or publishers.They are human beings doing their job. I simply said that I got tired going that route. And really, my remarks were in response to the young lady that said she wished ebooks would vanish. I have never read one of your books but I am sure they are excellent. I congratulate you. You worked hard and you deserve your success. You seem to be under the impression though, that I am illiterate, lazy and am so conceited that I fancy myself smarter than any old agent or publisher – that is not the case. If it came across like that, I am sorry. My point, obviously not well made, was that ebooks give everybody a chance. We all like to have our work read, I, no less than you. Yes, I do write for the love of it and I will be the first to admit that my work is light -funny, but light. So, let us each do what we feel comfortable with – I ebooks and you, an agent and publisher – and good luck to both of us.

The frustration we writers feel after hours scouring agents websites, scribbling down submission guidelines, and reformatting, again, for a particular agents requirements,and then waiting 6-8 weeks before we receive a response – if we even get one- is “almost” the point where we say why bother since an agent only wants what is going to be a bestseller (in their own opinion). There is no guarantee when we submit to agents and publishers that what we wrote is going to move them to take a chance on our work. So….the next best thing is to self-publish and hope we get noticed. Then again, if we self-publish and our books become a big seller, why would we want to sign with an agent or publisher after we have done all the hard work. I read were some writers have received huge success when self-published and when an agent or publisher approached with a contract, they turned them down. Now isn’t that a hoot – being the one to turn them down. I am not being snide, I am only saying there is never a guarantee with anything in life. It is all a crap shoot. Agents and publishers are a business and do what their own guidelines tell them to do.

Focusing on Nigeria, Democracy For All repudiates current democracies for being the business of a few by a few for a few. Mass poverty is states’ creation through non-observance of the tenets of true democracy. Democracy is not static. To take it to the next level nations must democratize the public services and executive offices in equity and review state budgets that gives the public their share of the commonwealth. For 140 years American women played no part and had no shares in US politics. For 2,500 years, democracy served the strong and damned the weak. It is time for a new deal Ready to print, the 150-page work will startle nations for it redefines democracy and changes the rules of the game of politics. I would love to send you the Preface or full tsxt. Thanks.

Richard Anyamele, you have managed to shut down an entire line of discussion with your foregoing comment.

You provide a marvelous example of the drek that is clogging the literary arteries and making it impossible for any reasonable voices to be heard, let alone published.