The New Yorker rejects the New Yorker

FWIW, Mr. Cameron seems to ignore the possibility that the recipient recognized it for the plagiarism that it was but just didn't want to get into a back and forth over it. (Not a good course of action from the recipient, in my book, but still possible.)

Add to that the multiple other legitimate reasons to reject a story that weren't considered (timing, context, needs for specific content outweighing the content of the stack in front of the slushkiller...) and this becomes, mostly, a snarky "up yours" to the New Yorker.

ETA: The process is hard enough. Rejection is disheartening enough. Shouting "screw you" in public expends energy and redirects bile your mind and body could be using for better things.

theorange said:

In both cases, he got not one bite of interest: not one indication that this was even very strong writing (e.g. a strong personal rejection with a serious invite for more) nor one indication that this was plagiarism.

All in all, pretty damning.

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I wish people would stop pulling this stupid, time-wasting crap. What's it intended to prove, again?

This is not a new stunt. Rejected writers frequently play this game.

Yes, a bunch of editors rejected Harry Potter too.

Manuscript acceptance is not an algorithm. There are a lot of fundamental principles that will dramatically increase or decrease your chances, but beyond that, there are a bunch of intangibles that come into play, and yes, a certain amount of luck.

These frustrated writers who play the "Hahahahah you rejected an award-winning story so you don't know jack!" game remind me of PUAs who think getting any given woman to sleep with you is a matter of inputting the correct sequence that guarantees sex. Just because she likes a certain type of guy, or says she likes a certain type of guy, doesn't mean she's going to sleep with every single guy of that type, or that she's a liar because you're that type of guy and she wouldn't sleep with you.

I'd read this article (or a similar one) awhile back and overall, I find the whole thing ridiculous.

First off, sending this in the first place is wasting the time of editors and slush-pile readers that should be devoted to real, legitimate writers. It's inconsiderate.

Also, I think it would be underestimating the publishing industry in general to assume that they *wouldn't* have some sort of check in place to make sure the works they accept aren't plagiarized. I know college professors who run each student's term papers through such programs; why wouldn't high-end journals do the same? Even if they didn't, they may have passed it by simply because it sounded too similar (in topic/subject) to something they'd read published recently (i.e. the original work). Either way, I wouldn't imagine any journal would take the time to personalize a rejection to someone whom they thought was plagiarizing or re-hashing a concept or subject that's been done before.

theorange said:

I talked to someone who had been a slush pile reader at The New Yorker and at the Paris Review for a couple of years. He said the slush pile was chiefly a way to get people to buy subscriptions to the magazine ("read a few more stories from our publication and maybe you'll write something we like"), that everyone at the magazine knew it, and that not once did a story he read make into either magazine.

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Do a little back-of-the-envelope math to estimate how many subscriptions might actually be sold using this tactic and you will easily deduce that this is bullshit.

theorange said:

Here's some evidence that backs up this blog's idea: that acceptance from the slush pile has little or nothing to do with merit.

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So what's it about, then? The article doesn't have any idea. I've published stuff out of the slush pile in the past. What was I going on?

theorange said:

Well let's see. The Paris Review receives in the neighborhood of 15,000 submissions a year. At the New Yorker the number is undoubtedly higher. If all are rejected, and 10% take up new subscriptions, that's 1500 subscriptions.

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Assuming that number of submissions is correct, a 10% sales rate would be quite phenomenal. IIRC, most advertisers/marketers are delighted with a 2% response rate.

At $40/year that's $60,000.

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Even if I accept your 10%/$60,000 estimate, now subtract the cost of hiring slush pile readers to send responses. They may be low-paid, but they still have to be paid.

Not bad, especially given the fact that most of those will automatically renew their subscriptions for years to come,

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An unlikely assumption. I don't know what the renewal rates are for the Paris Review or the NYT, but I am skeptical that anywhere near 100% of all rejected writers who subscribed in the naive hope that it would help them get published will remain permanent subscribers.

and crucially, that the slush pile is read by unpaid interns.

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You base this on what? And even if true, there are still operating expenses. Interns cost money even if they are unpaid.

What you are suggesting here is that magazines take on unpaid interns whose sole responsibility is to mail form rejection letters.

(from an intern's experience)
"The Paris Review almost never takes anything from the slush to publish in the magazine. When I worked there, they told me that it had happened once over a year ago, with a story about an autistic piano player, but that it was almost unprecedented. And that seems about right."

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I am not surprised that acceptance from the slush pile at a prestigious literary magazine is very rare. They have plenty of known authors submitting to them, and have you ever seen a slush pile?

I remember reading that the last time the New Yorker pulled from the slush was probably in the late 90s.

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I want a source for that - if they literally have not published anything from the slush pile in close to 20 years, they would just stop accepting unsolicited submissions.

theorange said:

Just thought this might be a morale boost to those of us who have been rejected a lot, particularly by prestigious magazines and journals, and wondered what the hell it would take to get an acceptance.

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I've been rejected a lot. Then I discovered that to get an acceptance, I needed to write a better manuscript.

In the end? I got published. So I'm quite happy. I hope the hahagotcha folks are happy too.

Um, of course slush readers are not just choosing based on quality -- they are choosing based on what the very small publication needs in upcoming months. This is a moving target.

theorange said:

True for direct mail. But this is not direct mail. This is an ad to a super targeted, self-selected audience of people who want to get into the pages of the magazine and unrealistic hope is being dangled in front of them at a cost of $40 (or $70 for the New Yorker).

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A 10% subscription rate is still unrealistic. Even super-targeted campaigns do not get those kinds of numbers.

Use some common sense here. You are arguing that 10% of all rejected writers are convinced that subscribing to the magazine that rejected them will increase their chances of being accepted in the future.

Here's a source: there is also substantial evidence that it is completely impossible to sell to the New Yorker through the submissions form. The previous fiction editor of the New Yorker, Bill Buford, never bought a single story from the open slush during his eight-year tenure. The current editor, Deborah Treisman, is a bit more cagey, but, in interviews, she has never named a single person whose story she’s selected from the online submission form. She does name unagented and unsolicited authors she’s published, but it feels entirely likely that all of those stories were submitted through connections. And when she’s asked how to get a story into the New Yorker, she basically says, “Through your agent.”

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Your source is a blogger who admits that this is all speculation.

I would not be surprised if one story accepted per year off the slush pile is not atypical.

I would suggest that being rejected would make a writer like the publication less and be actively disinclined to subscribe to it, perhaps dropping it if they were already subscribed.

What's the point of all this exactly? What a waste of energy.

If the suspicions of you and the author of the blog entry are true . . . so what? An editor can run his or her publication any way they like. If she prefers to fill her magazine with solicited submissions, good for her. If you think submitting is wasting your time, then don't submit.

And how exactly is this a morale boost to rejectees? "Don't worry, you never had a shot anyway. It was all a waste of time." That wouldn't make me feel any better about a rejection.

Personally, I think rejections aren't something to bemoan anyway. I treat them like merit badges or xbox acheivements. They mean I'm doing my job. But that's another story altogether, I guess.

You know, not everybody likes the stories the New Yorker publishes.

Torgo said:

I wish people would stop pulling this stupid, time-wasting crap. What's it intended to prove, again?

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It's intended to prove that the author of the piece is a cutting-edge journalist. However, what it actually shows is that the author of the piece makes impossible leaps of logic and probably has a whole grove of bitter lemons growing in his rejection file.

theorange said:

Here's some evidence that backs up this blog's idea: that acceptance from the slush pile has little or nothing to do with merit.

I talked to someone who had been a slush pile reader at The New Yorker and at the Paris Review for a couple of years. He said the slush pile was chiefly a way to get people to buy subscriptions to the magazine ("read a few more stories from our publication and maybe you'll write something we like"), that everyone at the magazine knew it, and that not once did a story he read make into either magazine.

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All this shows is that the person who had been a slush reader had a poor understanding of several aspects of magazine publishing.

I've run several slush piles. They're monsters, and are mostly full of unpublishable stuff. But every now and then you find a gem in them and when that happens, it's magical.

Let's not pretend that people who pull this stunt know more than the editors who slog through their submissions and commission all the good work they can. It's insulting and patronising and tedious, and there is no point to this game.

Williebee said:

FWIW, Mr. Cameron seems to ignore the possibility that the recipient recognized it for the plagiarism that it was but just didn't want to get into a back and forth over it.

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Yep. I suspect this is exactly what happened. I've read slush for a few literary mags. Slush readers tend to be good readers with a good memory for text.

This guy is just following along the footsteps of other writers who pulled the same thing, going back at least to the 18th century.

It's not worth engaging with them. You read the first paragraph or so, you recognize it as familiar (or perhaps identify it immediately) and you maybe Google or pull something off the book shelf to make sure you're remembering correctly.

And then you sigh and move on.

Honestly, I think the percentage of plagiarizers in college English classes and the percentage of plagiarizers in publishing are pretty close, and when I think about that too long I get depressed.

So I checked out the complete article, and it's about as misguided as they come.

The author draws this analogy between the originally-published-story and a guy picked by "the prettiest girl at the dance". He reasons that the story is so intrinsically good everyone should want it, just as every "chick" should want that guy now that Prettiest Girl danced with him.

This poor story, like the sly dude chosen by the dance-floor starlet, thought he had it all. Here he was convinced that he could effortlessly charm the panties off of any university-based handout with “Review” in the title. What the hell happened?

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Reality.

Keep in mind that they do in fact call it the slush pile, not the “jewel in the rough pile,” or the “we can’t wait to see what serendipity brought us today!” pile

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I can't imagine anyone who's actually read slush saying that with a straight face.

but the slush pile, named after the very same stuff that mucks your driveway up after a dank snowfall. In some cases it would be more accurate to call it the “gotta snake my drain” pile. A part of me really wanted to be outed, to have some vigilant editor write back and say, “Nice try. Consider yourself blacklisted.”

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Why would any editor want to risk getting into a back-and-forth with a writer who might go off the deep end or threaten to sue for libel?

The author may have time to waste with silly pranks. The editors have more productive things to do.

The NYer doesn't need to troll the slush for subscriptions - as pointed out, the expense of having a person do so would exceed the potential financial gain pretty quickly, even at 10%. Sixty grand is nothing to that publication. It's nothing to most operating, nationally-distributed publications with full staffs and subscriptions lists even half their size.

I'd vote that the stuff was likely recognized and tossed with a sigh because why bother engaging someone trying that nonsense? They're looking for a response, don't give it.

This kind of thing is a stupid exercise.

More pertinent would be a discussion of acceptance/rejection practices at magazines, and we have an ongoing thread about the value of "credits" in the Short Story Forum.

At very few places are manuscripts judged on their merits or demerits alone. Authorship matters. Previous credits matter. Yes, a manuscript needs to be "good enough", and certainly needs to be something other than just plain industrial-strength awful, but when that bar has been surmounted, the ancillary stuff like author name/reputation and previous publication history matters a hell of a lot. If you ain't known, and you ain't got an impressive history of previous publication, your manuscript does not get the level of positive consideration given to those coming from writers who do meet such criteria.

That's the way it is. The idea that the manuscript is all that matters is the purest most distilled essence of bullshit.

caw

Queen of Swords said:

Why would any editor want to risk getting into a back-and-forth with a writer who might go off the deep end or threaten to sue for libel?

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True.

There's also the problem of revenge: years ago I had enormous trouble with a writer I sent a brief personal rejection to, who assumed from that brief note that I wanted to start a discussion with him about his work. When I stopped responding to his communications he started following me, sending me photos he'd taken of me going about my day, and sending me notes detailing the violence he'd carry out against me if I didn't give him help with his work.

This sort of thing happens to agents and editors far more frequently than you'd think, and it often comes from the people who submit things which they've obviously not written themselves, or who submit things which are obviously some sort of "test"--much like this one was.

cornflake said:

The NYer doesn't need to troll the slush for subscriptions - as pointed out, the expense of having a person do so would exceed the potential financial gain pretty quickly, even at 10%. Sixty grand is nothing to that publication.

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True. And subscriptions bring in very little money compared to the amounts earned through advertising, which makes this scenario even less likely.

blacbird said:

This kind of thing is a stupid exercise.

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True.

At very few places are manuscripts judged on their merits or demerits alone. Authorship matters. Previous credits matter. Yes, a manuscript needs to be "good enough", and certainly needs to be something other than just plain industrial-strength awful, but when that bar has been surmounted, the ancillary stuff like author name/reputation and previous publication history matters a hell of a lot. If you ain't known, and you ain't got an impressive history of previous publication, your manuscript does not get the level of positive consideration given to those coming from writers who do meet such criteria.
That's the way it is. The idea that the manuscript is all that matters is the purest most distilled essence of bullshit.

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Blacbird, you have such a warped view of publishing sometimes.

If your writing is good enough then it is all that matters.

If an editor has room for one piece and has two of equal merit, one from a complete unknown and one from an established big name writer, then the editor might well choose the piece from the big name writer: but she might choose the piece from the unknown writer instead, because there's a thrill to be had from discovering a new talent in the slush pile.