Not Right For My List
You did the right things. You looked in Jeff Herman's book, you laboriously reviwed a whole year's worth of Deals listings from the Publishers Weekly web site, you looked on AgentQuery.com, 1000LiteraryAgents.com, checked out Publisher's Lunch, went to a New York writers workshop to learn how to craft an excellent query and pitch, you had your query and pitch materials deemed excellent by editors from the BIG HOUSES in New York. You send your validated query to validated agents and editors. Some ask for a partial read. You send your stuff. The response you get is, "Not right for my list."
My business career was spent marketing cutting-edge high-tech products in global markets and receiving very high margins on the software and hardware bought by sophisticated customers. I know what it takes to achieve marketing success in a very tough environment. That is why I know that, in the operating plan of literary agencies and publishers, highly detailed, objective criteria are established for the marketing plan. This means that agents and editors alike have objective criteria for their lists that writers are not privy to in the various published profiles writers consult.
These objective criteria are not published for competitive reasons, but I believe they exist. For example, a profile specifies that an agent or editor handles memoir manuscripts. This is all the writer knows. My contention is that such an editor or agent has objective qualifiers for the list they manage. These objective qualifiers might include the following: nationality or ethnicity of the writer, cultural background for the story, point of view, social issues addressed, time period addressed, personal issues addressed and the length of the manuscript.
Such objective qualifiers would determine whether or not the submission was right for the list BEFORE the creative content of the work was evaluated. Which means that you may write like Proust, but the memoir manuscipt you submitted would be rejected for objective reasons prior to literary and subjective considerations.
If any of you writers have the same suspicion, I would love to hear from you and get your best guesses at the kinds of objective criteria that you think are being applied to the genres of manuscripts you have submitted. If we can piece some of the criteria together, we might be able to do our homework better and have a better shot at being "right for my list" the next time we submit our work.
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Linda Jo Hunter says:
Aren't rejections part of the fun?
Michael this is a well thought out idea and probably very true but politically incorrect and therefore a secret. The publishing industry is an elephant and we are all blind and each of us feels part of the elephant and gets a different take . . personally, I have saved a stack of thirty rejections to my query and proposal that it took to get my first book represented by an agent. . then there were all the rejections my agent got before she sold my book . . it's a dance. But you are right that it would help if we knew what music is playing.
Michael Warren says:
Wallpapered With Rejection
Ms. Hunter,
When I first starting writing and sending out short stories, I was able to wallpaper my study with rejection slips. As appealing as that might be to some, I would prefer to cover my study with letters from appreciative readers.
Since your book did make it, do you have any speculations about the hidden objective criteria it satisfied?
Linda Jo Hunter says:
now that you mention it. . .
I think I hit an objective by being one of the first women to write a serious book about grizzly/brown bears. The market for women writers seems to have a bent for something unusal. . for a while, if you had some domestic abuse in your book you were in. Now it is more a reality show, I think and guess that a helpless woman who goes on a harrowing adventure and makes it alive by the skin of her teeth would sell . . competent women who are wise and capable have not been interesting yet. But I am just guessing based on the calls I used to get for trackers when I was running ISPT (international society for professional trackers) for telelvison. One guy asked me if I could give him a story of a woman who was stranded unprepared and was saved by a man. . I told him I knew a true story of a woman who saved a man in that situation and he excused himself and hung up. But Michael I really think that someone who says that you are not right for their list DON'T KNOW. . they are just guessing and readers like me want something different and new . . if one of those books slips through to someone's list it will be a bestseller. That's what I think anyway.
Michael Warren says:
Heavy Dew Claw
Ms. Hunter,
What would you make of a polar bear dew claw TOO DEEPLY IMPRINTED in the snow?
Have you read Whithead on grizz?
Is literary fiction ever something different and new?
Michael
Linda Jo Hunter says:
Bears don't have dew claws
Bears have large plantigrade tracks with five asymmetrical toes. The smallest toe is located on the inside of the track and doesn't always show. In addition there is a metacarpal pad which creates one large curved pad, wider than it is long and then a heel pad, which also does not always register. Dew claws are extra toes which are up the leg of some animals and only show if they step in something deep . . Moose, deer, elk, sheep, coyotes, dogs etc. So what I would make of that is someone who wasn't sure what they were seeing.
I have never heard of Whithead .. would that be Alfred North Whithead?
I love literary fiction that is something that is new and different. . as a avid reader, I find anything that strays from a predictable formula interesting.
For instance, a Russian author I found who wrote "A dream in Polar Fog" . . I could look up the author but the title will get you there. The version I read was a tranlation, but it was refreshing to say the least and a very thought provoking example of basic structures of human society.
Michael Warren says:
Seeing Is Believing
I have seen photographs of bear tracks with dew claws visible. It is supposed to mean the bear was panicked. Whitehead wrote a very famous academic study of bears. Alfred North Whitehead made a good living out of philosophy but his outlook died with him. I got another rejection today--but was told nonetheless that my story was compelling. What does it take to be right for the list?