Publishers reject Austen? Well, of course

The story of the man who sent Jane Austen's work to agents and publishers has been all over the place today. We were invited to laugh at the recipients who sent back polite rejection letters.

But, really, how silly were they?

There are two perfectly reasonable explanations which don't make them look so foolish.

The first is that upon receiving a book that began:

It is a truth universally acknowledged

The agents and publishers sighed, thought "not another one" and sent a polite rejection note without reading all that much more.

The second, even more likely, explanation is the manuscripts were not read at all.

These were books sent, entirely unsolicited, by a man they didn't know. To read all such scripts the companies involved would have to employ extra staff. The number of times such unsolicited material leads to a blockbuster is, I am sure, sufficiently small to make this extra staff a waste of money.

So in most cases a polite rejection will be sent. Most of the respondents avoided an explicit claim that they had actually read the submissions.

Comments

[Anthony C]

I think this analysis is spot on. As I understand it, very few publishers now accept unsolicited manuscripts - it's close to standard practice that potential fiction authors are expected to gain the support of an agent (who will in turn mediate with the publishers) and that without this support, manuscripts will not be considered.

[George Gissing's Restless Spirit]

You (and your chum Oliver Kamm) have entirely missed the point of this "story" (the lazy journalist's sloppy but revealing substitute for what used to be called a "report"). It's not that these people are foolish, but that they are ignorant and cynical, making decisions about what to publish solely on the basis of prospective sales, rather than any conception of quality. Not that sales should be irrelevant, of course - these are businesses, not charities - just that the focus on sales *above all* favours certain types of book and disfavours others.
As for the idea that any of them instantly recognised the line you quote, have you ever actually met anyone who works in publishing, or are you labouring under the delusion that people who work with books must necessarily know a lot, or even anything at all, about them?

[Guy Herbert]

Of course you are right, Mr Finklelstein. I've worked in publishing for 20 years, one way or another. Even in my relatively short time as a bookseller I was assailed by unsolicited authors. My guess it is mostly the not-another-one reaction.

There are a handful of agents, though many more publishers, who genuinely do have a no unsolicited policy and stick to it. Even they may find "not for us" is more effective in deflecting fire than straight refusal. It is particularly tiresome to receive pleadings on why this particular Harry Potter imitation, holiday memoir, or work of towering spiritual revelation, is a special exception to your policy that you have a duty to humanity to consider.

But one point you missed. It is also rather risky to do anything to engage with would-be authors unless you are sincerely interested in publishing them. At best, needy and hopeless people will eat your time with idiot questions when you could be working with real writers. At worst... I have had mysterious threats to me, and obscene letters sent to my identifiable colleagues, as a consequence of a tart single-line email to a gentleman who was cc-ing strange rants about the ignorance of the publishing industry to most of the world's best known literary agents (plus me, which shows how deluded he was). I had requested him "not to pollute our in boxes again". As a result I live with the fear that the person concerned may appear on the doorstep, possibly with a weapon.

Confronted by someone who has rewritten Jane Austen changing only the names it is safe to assume you are not facing a real-life Pierre Menard. It is either a loony or a prankster trying to waste your time and maybe sell the story to the papers.

The professional thing to do is to send the standard, probably pre-printed, rejection slip that you send to 995/1000ths of submitters. To answer with wit is like a wine taster swallowing the whole glass: the course of someone sufficiently naive, bored, or bad-tempered at that moment to ignore the inevitable future suffering they are bringing upon themselves.