Tuesday 26 June 2007

Submissions

It was a morning going through submissions today. I mention this because there's been some controversy in the blogosphere over some delightfully honest remarks from Scott Pack backed up quickly by Susan Hill and Snow Books and probably others. It's not an easy job going through the submissions pile, not so much because the choices are difficult but because there are so many people who say that they are aware how hard it is to publish a book successfully and yet somehow think that this rule doesn't apply in their case. So many perfectly well written memoirs, fascinating to one's close family but not so much to everyone else and more enthusiastic novels that have obviously not come close to a second draft. Let alone the dozens that every book should go through before it sees the light of day.

It's sad but over the last year we've had at least five hundred unsolicited submissions and asked to see maybe five in their entirety. We have published two.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the mention. I must confess I was surprised by the hostile reaction to my comments which were, I think, quite honest and fair. Mind you, visits to my blog have shot up as a result!