HeyPublisher

One of the great things about running a site like HeyPublisher.com is that we get to work with enthusiastic publishers and talented editors who know how to apply just the right amount of polish to make a writer’s work shine. If writers are the carrion supporting the publishing industry, then editors are the chefs carving off the most-tender morsels, spicing them up, preparing and serving them to us on fine china.

Just as a great meal is the right combination of raw ingredients and a talented chef’s signature flourish, a great story is the right combination of engaging storytelling (the raw ingredients) and precise editing (the flourish).  Without the two together … well, it’s kind of like eating raw carrots for dinner.  It will keep you alive.  But would you really want to live that way?

With as much as editors do to help writers, you would think that the two would have a cozy relationship with each other.  In some cases they do.  In most cases they do not.  The problem seems to be that many of us writers view editors as simply gatekeepers by whom we must pass on the road to publication.  We are confused, oftentimes bitter when our submissions don’t make it through this human filter.  Yet when was the last time we stopped and asked an editor why they rejected our work?

We recently asked a number of editors this very question and what they told us took us by surprise. Do we as writers really make these 5 common mistakes?

Common Mistake #5 : Weak Introduction

There are no hard and fast rules about what makes for a strong introduction – but one thing is clear: when the person manning the slush-pile has to get through 3 dozen submissions by the end of the day, they are not (ever) going to read a submission in its entirety.

Malcolm Gladwell in his 2005 book, Blink, talks about how most people make many of their most important decisions based on little more than a cursory assessment of the information available to them.  Editors are no different. If you don’t catch their attention early — in the first sentence or paragraph of your story — then chances are slim the rest of your stunning tome will ever be read.

Summary: Catch Their Attention Early

Common Mistake #4 : Spelling and/or Grammar Errors

Really?! This one struck me as too impossible to be true. In this age of automated spell-checking and green squiggles beneath every sentence Microsoft Word doesn’t believe to be grammatically correct, I find it hard to believe we’re still making these boneheaded mistakes.  But then I reread a story I’ve been working on.  I mean, I really read it.  Not as a story, but simply as a series of sentences.  I counted three occurrences of “there” when I really meant to say “their”.  And in one case “where” was mistyped as “whore”.  Each of these passed spell-check with flying colors.  But, had I sent the manuscript to an editor, it would have made me look like an idiot.

Maybe it’s because of all this technology at our disposal that we’re still making these mistakes. We have, to a certain extent, become the tools of our tools. If we simply scan our documents looking for highlighted errors to correct, are we doing our manuscript justice?

One need only take a gander at a site like Damn You Autocorrect to see real-world examples of our technology’s Freudian slips in action. When sent to a friend over SMS, it might be funny. When sent to an editor in the form of a submission it can be downright disastrous.

Summary: Spell-Check Your Spell-Checker – Then Check It Again.

Common Mistake #3 : Not Following Submission Guidelines

One of the “secrets” that we learned when talking with various editors is that they use their publication’s submission guidelines as a “first filter” when reviewing submissions.  It’s a gauge of how much time a writer spent reviewing the guidelines — or if they reviewed them at all.  It also is a gauge of how well the writer understands the publication and its audience.  (more about this later).

If every writer followed the submission guidelines, there would be no need for them.  But since most writers fire off their submissions with only a cursory glance at the guidelines, editors are given a unique opportunity to reject a submission that doesn’t follow the guideline to the letter without actually having to read the submission.

If the guidelines say to include a short bio, include a short bio.  If they say only send them submissions on days that start with the letter ‘T’ , then only send them submissions on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  The sooner we understand that these are merely hoops we’re meant to jump through like we’re some form of circus animal, the better off our submission will be.  We may not like it, but for the time being the publishers are making up the rules.

Summary: Read the Guidelines; Jump Through the Hoops

Common Mistake #2 : Giving Up Too Quickly

Personally, I’m a huge advocate of withdrawing a submission that has been languishing in an editor’s in-box for months on end.  The ability to withdraw a submission was one of the first features we built into HeyPublisher, and is a key metric we use to gauge the “writer friendliness” of a publication.  It’s a fundamental right as a writer to control who gets to babysit our creation, and for how long.

But then an editor put it to me this way:

We get 300 submissions a month, a full third of which are fantastic.  We publish quarterly and will only end up publishing about twenty pieces in an issue.  It takes a lot of time and internal debate to winnow down from the number of works we want to publish to the number we actually can publish.

In other words, editors sometimes need time.  Most publishers are pretty up-front about how much time they need in their submission guidelines.  As writers we need to take this time into consideration.  If a publisher says they need ninety days, why would we withdraw our submission after thirty?  We simply waste our time and theirs by doing so (not to mention, we spoil our chances of being selected by this editor in the future).

Related to this, we’ve had several editors contact us in recent months concerning writers who have withdrawn their submissions without first contacting them.  In each of the cases, the submission was being considered for publication, but the date of publication was still being decided.  In short: editor and writer simply failed to communicate with each other on their intentions.  If they had, a writer would have been published, and an editor would have great content for an upcoming issue.

Summary: Commit to the Review Period and Communicate With The Editor

Common Mistake #1 : Not Understanding the Audience

Yes.  This is the number one mistake writers make when submitting their writing to a publication.  They simply do not understand the publication’s audience and have sent the editor a work that is completely inappropriate for that audience.

How many issues of of a publication do you read prior to sending that publication your writing?  Have you even read the publication?  If we answer “no” to this question, why are we sending our writing out?  What “contribution” is our writing making to this publication?  Of what value will it be to this magazine’s readership?

Writing is about telling a story.  Publishing is about marrying that story with an audience that will read it.   If we want to increase our acceptance rate, we need to get better about sending our submissions to the right publishers.  And this requires time, research, and whole lot of reading.

It’s getting easier, though.  Duotrope provides tons of data about individual publishers, including statistics on how they are similar to other publications.  HeyPublisher is testing a publisher recommendation engine with a select group of writers, and with promising results.  And various sites around the web allow writers to weigh in on what they think of their favorite (or least-favorite) publishers.

Yet none of this relieves we writers of the responsibility of reviewing the market before we send out our writing.

Summary: Send Submissions to Publications You Read