That Darwinian Process 25th August 2010.

I thought I’d revisit the Darwinian process of selecting which submissions to contract. My first pass had identified 4 out of the remaining 17 manuscripts as potentially good enough to contract. This list, and accompanying comments were passed to my partner who only agreed with three of them – I said she was tougher than me! LOL. So that was the final result we offered contracts to three pieces. Bearing in mind we’d already discarded something like 6 manuscripts as being totally unsuitable before we started.

Of course several others will be given feedback including the magic words – if you decide to follow these guidelines we will be very happy to take another look should you decide to resubmit. (Although perhaps not in such formal wording.) No promises about acceptance will been made but doubtless it may have been taken that way.

Then it’ll be a crying shame if one of them rewrites their work, resubmits it and unfortunately doesn’t actually get it, so the second refusal will be a very severe disappointment, leaving the feeling they’ve somehow missed the boat. This is, of course, the case. It’s also a time when I think long and hard about not being quite so helpful in the first place.

Nevertheless, it is our policy to try to be helpful when we reject something, not merely to soften the blow, after all every author has a collection of rejections right?