Setting up for your rejection

Is that common with the e-publishers, for the rejection rate to be 95%? Is that because 95% of the manuscripts are complete rubbish, or are they turning down reasonably written stuff too?
I'm aiming to become e-published with my contemporary romance, and I'm happy to say my query did not begin with'yo', but I didn't realise the chances of getting accepted were that low.

I'm not going to name names here but I spoke with an editor in a chat room a few weeks back and she said she gets submissions in text speak, completely ignoring submission guidelines, queries written as if neither she nor the 'writer' is a professional.

So, yeah...it happens. Said editor still expects a high degree of professionalism. We're both in this to make money after all, and I know she has standards.

It wouldn't surprise me if the rejection rate was high at all. There are a lot of dafties out there.

Well, if that's the kind of crap people are sending in then it makes perfect sense the rejection rate would be so high. I just assumed the majority of aspiring writers would only send out their very best efforts in accordance with publishers' guidelines, etc.

So does anyone know which of the (romance) e-pubs are the toughest to get acceptance letters from? I would like to aim for the best with my work, I guess

It's always going to be tough if your book's shit. Your chances are pretty good if your book rocks.

There are some which are more prestigious, I guess you could say.

I'll have a pootle through my bookmarked links once I'm done with these damn chores and drop you a PM.

Thanks, that would be great

So does anyone know which of the (romance) e-pubs are the toughest to get acceptance letters from? I would like to aim for the best with my work, I guess

Click to expand...

I hope this doesn't break any forum rules, but you might want to read this thread at Romance Divas which asks basically the same question about top romance epubs.

The bottom line? Your mileage may vary, but the same names tend to come up when people ask about the top erom publishers.

Also, yes; acceptance rates at most reputable erom pubs run somewhere between 5% and 10%. If you look at the FAQs for a lot of them, it's spelled out there.

I had to join up to Romance Divas to see the thread, but looks like a great site. How could I have gone all this time without knowing about it? Browsing forums is my favourite distraction, so looks like I have a good few hours of non-writing ahead of me

Having been in e-publishing since before the term took off (I first e-published in 1995) and having learned and edited a few things along the way (and I'm a terrible editor (though a much better manager and financial person)) I can tell you the honest truth is that a) Yes, most (90%) of the stuff you receive is complete crap no matter if it's print or electronic), b) most of the stuff you can reject immediately is so poorly written it's virtually impossible to determine if the writer ever actually graduated high school, c) that the remaining stuff has such eggregious spelling and vocabulary issues that's it leaves one doubting if spellcheckers are any good whatsoever, d) that the story and plotlines are either 1) ripped right out of the latest tabloid headlines, 2) ripped directly off of the latest bestseller, 3) ripped off of the latest bestseller and rewritten to what the writer anted the original author to do, 4) etc. etc., etc.

Some people who want to be authors have the opinion that they can 1) rip off other authors characters and do with them what they will, 2) rip off storylines and just change the names, and 3) transplant historical battles and situations directly into some future time and have the events unfold exactly the same way, and sometimes with the same character names, etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum.

Then, these same people seem to think that you should pay them a fortune to publish their illiterate piece of crap because they're going to either be the next Stephen King, have made a spiritual discovery that makes them akin to Jesus, are revealing the secrets of the universe, or are going to help make the editor/publisher rich as well as themselves within the week merely by "touching" their golden manuscript.

That an editor should mention that they do not know how to use "its" and "it's", or "they're" and "their" or "your" and "you're", or punctuate simple English is sacrilege because they're homeless/out of work/working as a prostitute and this book is their ticket to fame/fortune/riches beyond even your imagining (since I obviously drive a Rolls Royce Shadow and not a 12-year old Pontiac Sunfire with a worn out fanbelt and rebuilt heads).

But, I digress again, I think...

ya know, after reading this thread, I feel hopeful.

Although I don't know this from experience, I'm going to hazard a wild guess that it is in fact easier to be accepted by an e-publisher than by a mainstream print house, but that doesn't mean they'll accept crap. It just means that they aren't desperately circling the wagons and worried about declining sales and profits as they doggedly pursue a broken business model. E-books being a growth industry, a new author probably has an actual chance to publish with an e-publisher, provided that your book is any good. Your book may still be rejected, but if so it will be on issues of quality, not because you're an unknown and your book doesn't fit into an exact pigeonholed genre/subgenre and they're too craven to take a chance on an author who isn't a proven best-seller.

Going over the self-published e-books, those that don't go through the publishing-house filter, about 90% of them are indeed crap, and I mean badly edited, badly proofread, full of misspellings and grammatical errors, stylistically turgid and awful, with purloined plots or none, one-dimensional characters, and heavy-handed ideology or just plain stupidity. If I was an e-publisher I would certainly reject all books like that. If you're going to have gatekeepers in the first place (I'm frankly philosophically opposed to the concept), then surely excluding such rubbish is their first order of business.

Just because you're writing an e-book doesn't mean you are freed from the need to write well, polish your work, revise and edit, get good advice from fresh eyes, proofread, and generally be professional. Even if you aren't going to go through a publishing house, you won't find readers if you don't do those things. There's a reason why publishing houses demand them, after all. But just because they reject books that, in all honesty, any publishing house has to reject, doesn't mean it's hopeless, if going through an e-publishing company is what you want to do.

Brian Rush said:

Your book may still be rejected, but if so it will be on issues of quality, not because you're an unknown and your book doesn't fit into an exact pigeonholed genre/subgenre and they're too craven to take a chance on an author who isn't a proven best-seller.

Click to expand...

Just a note: It's a common misperception that new authors can't sell to major commercial houses. But common doesn't make it true.

eqb said:

Just a note: It's a common misperception that new authors can't sell to major commercial houses. But common doesn't make it true.

Click to expand...

If by "can't" you mean literally zero chance, then you're right. There is, however, less and less chance every year. That's a necessary consequence of major publishing houses putting out fewer new titles, and that I believe is an ongoing trend that will not be reversed.

Brian Rush said:

If by "can't" you mean literally zero chance, then you're right. There is, however, less and less chance every year. That's a necessary consequence of major publishing houses putting out fewer new titles, and that I believe is an ongoing trend that will not be reversed.

Click to expand...

Your original post seemed to imply that good books by new writers don't sell to commercial publishers. I disagree. I see lots of new writers--in the past six months even--that sell to major houses.

Getting back to the OP's post, yes, it's annoying that e-publishers are deluged with crappy manuscripts. From what I've heard, print publishers get the same deluge of amazingly bad stuff. (See Slushkiller for a breakdown of Tor's slushpile.) I don't know if it's the entitlement fairy sitting on their shoulders, or the (sadly common) belief that writing shouldn't be so much work.

eqb said:

Your original post seemed to imply that good books by new writers don't sell to commercial publishers.

Click to expand...

Again, if by "don't" you mean "never," that's not what I believe to be the case and I apologize if that was the impression given.

However, I will say that under present circumstances a good book by a new writer will not necessarily -- or even probably -- sell to a commercial publisher. The chance is not zero, but it's less than what it was in the past, and will be less still in the future.

Of course, a bad book by a new writer definitely won't, which is what this thread was about.

Brian Rush said:

Again, if by "don't" you mean "never," that's not what I believe to be the case and I apologize if that was the impression given.

Click to expand...

No, I didn't mean never. I meant that your statement--that well-writtten books by new writers don't have a chance to sell on quality, that publishers are too craven to take on new writers--is incorrect. It's a common misconception, and I just wanted to point out the fallacy so that others reading here won't be misled.

However, this is getting off-topic. If you want to continue the debate, we should start a topic in the Roundtable.

KMTolan said:

...I have, on quite a few occasions, encountered NY authors and agents claiming that NY is still quite open to new writers. For me, this is as much a misconception as saying that NY is not taking anyone.

Click to expand...

NY is always open to new writers, imo. They have to be, or they would eventually run out of writers, because authors die, change genre, or just decide to quit writing.

And it's always been hard to break in, but it's never been impossible. It's still not impossible. While there are niches, such as m/m erotica, or novellas of whatever genre,my experience has been that the big publishing houses are not quite the unappreciative monoliths that are often portrayed.

I realize that saying, "But they bought my novels, and I'm unknown," is not quite enough. Nor that nearly all my writer friends have landed stellar deals in the last year or two. Maybe I'm hanging out with all the exceptions. (This is not snark, this is a genuine maybe.) If it is such a brick wall, if you do have solid data that it's hard/impossible for new writers to break in, it would be important to hear about specific numbers, specific cases.

I would hope that people send to NY books suitable for NY, and to epublishers books suitable for epublishers....

veinglory said:

I would hope that people send to NY books suitable for NY, and to epublishers books suitable for epublishers....

Click to expand...

QFT.

eqb said:

QFT.

Click to expand...

But how'll I know if something is for the biggies and another work is better for epubs?

annetookeen said:

But how'll I know if something is for the biggies and another work is better for epubs?

Click to expand...

My basic but not intentionally terse response is to read books fron NY houses and read books from epublishers (or even just look at descriptions of each type) and take note of differences between the two types. There are some things that are almost automatically ebooks (erotica, novellas & novelettes), for example.

Thanks MumblingSage and KMTolan! How about short story collections/anthologies? Are those also more fit for the epub/POD houses?