Angry Robot Round II: Epic Fantasy

Huh. Kind of funny. Morning after I find this discussion and post, I got my response. They're asking for the full ms!

Excited to reach this next step, though trying to contain a new level of nervous jitters, of course. They say it can still be a few months before any response comes.

JRVogt said:

Huh. Kind of funny. Morning after I find this discussion and post, I got my response. They're asking for the full ms!

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Congrats!

JRVogt said:

Huh. Kind of funny. Morning after I find this discussion and post, I got my response. They're asking for the full ms!

Excited to reach this next step, though trying to contain a new level of nervous jitters, of course. They say it can still be a few months before any response comes.

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Whoo hoo!! Yay, Josh! **flails the pompoms of victory**

Yay! Best of luck, Josh!!

JRVogt said:

Huh. Kind of funny. Morning after I find this discussion and post, I got my response. They're asking for the full ms!

Excited to reach this next step, though trying to contain a new level of nervous jitters, of course. They say it can still be a few months before any response comes.

Click to expand...

Congrats!

Of course, as my wife has just pointed out to me, you are now technically my competition. So I'll have to crush you and all that. Please send me your address so I can have someone deliver a ticking package ...

I kid, I kid ... maybe. *shifty eyes*

Thanks all!

MHughes, we'll do the gentlemanly thing and shake hands, wish each other luck and may the best man...

What? No, I'm not hiding anything behind my back. Why do you ask?

This thing? It's a...crowbar-shaped back scratcher, of course.

Seriously though, best of luck to all!

I thought that at first, too.

But isn't in their best interest to put out everything that they think is good?

Therefore, if they got 50 theoretically best-sellers out of 55 submissions, wouldn't they try to do all 50? if not now, then somewhere down the line...

... or that could just be my good nature making me delusional again.

Yes guys, think of it as the japanese version of Ninja Warrior.

You are only competing against yourself and Mt. Literarmi!

Something that I noticed about the subs last year was that they were all quite different. We had a larger scale humorous space opera, fantasy with gargoyles, a sci-fi mystery with tikis, Chuck with aliens, my circus-flavored fantasy...I read quite a few of the other submissions, and while there's realistically so many they could take on, it didn't feel like we were in competition as much.

But this year for AR it's narrower...

Dropping by with a late (congrats!!!) for JR.

I'll be very interested to see what they pick for finals, as far as epic fantasy with that Angry Robot flavor...

I feel like that should be some kind of spice market seasoning. Hmm, yes, tonight we shall be having the quail, with a bit of Angry Robot flavor to awaken the palette.

In the most recent podcast, Lee said there was close to 700 submissions.

Regarding how many books they choose and such - if you haven't read the Slushkiller entry on Making Light (originally posted in 2004), it's worth a look.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden is one of the editors at TOR (her husband is Patrick, also Senior Editor). She starts out analyzing the basic rejection and goes all the way to why a book will or won't get picked up. Neat stuff.

That said, even if one of my 'competitors' (who I prefer to think of as fellow slags in the word mines) gets chosen over me, at least I can point to their work when it comes out and say 'Mine was in the running'. And dangit, that feels pretty darn good.

mhughes said:

That said, even if one of my 'competitors' (who I prefer to think of as fellow slags in the word mines) gets chosen over me, at least I can point to their work when it comes out and say 'Mine was in the running'. And dangit, that feels pretty darn good.

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i second that sentiment.

Hi everyone,

For those still waiting, I found this total from on the Strange Chemistry thread (posted by laurlam). I thought I'd share since it provides totals per imprint:

Via Amanda's Twitter feed:

Final count for the Open Door is 687. Of those 217 are for AR (epic fantasy) and 470 are for SC.

It would be interesting to find out what the submission rate was from the first to last day of open submissions. I'd wager the graph would look U-shaped, with lots of submissions on the first day or two, then thinning out until the last-minute folks turned theirs in.

Wow. I'm actually a bit surprised at the number for AR...I would think that's a bit low.

I thought it was a bit low too. But when I considered that the open submission was only for about two weeks, plus the fact that the guidelines were fairly narrow (just epic/classic fantasy), it seemed about right.

So I think I read somewhere that one editor is reviewing all of the submissions. Assuming he's averaging about 2 per day (which might be a stretch given other day-to-day business), and goes by order, that means last day submitters will hear around the end of July to early August?...

...but I'll probably still keep checking three times a day anyway

Hmm... they've taken down all the info from the 2012 Open Door site, but I'm pretty sure I remember them saying there would be 2 editors reading - and they did promise that the editors would read, not slush-pile readers.

217 huh? I like that number a lot more than over 700! Let's see... last year they signed 5 authors out of their Open Door period (they didn't say if that included Strange Chemistry), so if that's all at Angry Robot and if I want to drive myself nuts hypothesizing, if 5 people got contracts again that would make the odds 1:43 (off the top of my head) of getting published from this submission call. I can definitely like those odds. Probably way better than most of my submission odds!

Eliza C said:

Hmm... they've taken down all the info from the 2012 Open Door site, but I'm pretty sure I remember them saying there would be 2 editors reading - and they did promise that the editors would read, not slush-pile readers.

217 huh? I like that number a lot more than over 700! Let's see... last year they signed 5 authors out of their Open Door period (they didn't say if that included Strange Chemistry), so if that's all at Angry Robot and if I want to drive myself nuts hypothesizing, if 5 people got contracts again that would make the odds 1:43 (off the top of my head) of getting published from this submission call. I can definitely like those odds. Probably way better than most of my submission odds!

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They got almost 1000 submissions from last year's Open Month.

So, it's more like 0.5%. Every one of the ones that made it to the end, but didn't get offers, were very good and very original. Some required rewrites before they were accepted. So please keep that in mind: the odds aren't very good.

Miguelito said:

So, it's more like 0.5%. Every one of the ones that made it to the end, but didn't get offers, were very good and very original. Some required rewrites before they were accepted. So please keep that in mind: the odds aren't very good.

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It's worth noting that there are no odds. It's not a lottery. The individual books do not stand an equal chance of "winning".

If you've written a very good book, your chances are very good. The book still might not prove to be a fit for the publishing house, but it likely wasn't tossed out of consideration anywhere near as fast as the books with grammar errors on the first page.

Books are not widgets. Statistics do not apply well to them.

JJbenedictis, you're absolutely right, of course. But while it's not a lottery, there might be considerations that are so nuanced that it might as well be described as luck. Things like two submissions being very similar in some specific ways, or maybe the trait of an MC just rubbed an editor the wrong way for some personal reason... who knows. In any case, it's mildly interesting to consider the general odds of publication.

On that note, assuming 5 people get contracts, which I doubt is guaranteed in any case (could be lower or higher), the odds would be 0.7% if they're picking from both AR and SC pools.

It would be interesting to find out if AR is planning to focus more on epic fantasy, and if this is a trend away from the urban fantasy and steampunk trend. Personally, I'm looking forward to reading one of their forthcoming S&S novels (The Hammer & The Blade by Paul S. Kemp). I admit, I'm an epic fantasy junky, but it's interesting that whenever I see someone reading a book (whether it's at the mall, or at work, or just at a bus stop), about 1/3 of the time it's epic fantasy.

Anne Lyle said:

As anyone with a grasp of probability will understand, the odds of a randomly-selected manuscript being published and the odds of a specific manuscript being published are two completely different things...

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I realize, of course, that the odds aren't statistical. Just trying to put some positive spin on things while I wait. Tension always amps up when the responses start filtering in.

sgf said:

Of those 217 are for AR (epic fantasy)

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I'm surprised there were so few.

From some of the earlier posts, I think the numbers may have been higher if they gave us a bit more notice. Epic Fantasy is not something you can complete in such a short space of time.

Perhaps that was intentional though

Hey, how's everyone doing?

Today, instead of stalking my email, I helped film a documentary about penguin conservation. Woot.