Thursday, January 7, 2010
Signed, Stupid
From our website:
If you wish to submit a manuscript to us, we ask that you send the following:
-A query letter telling us what the book is about.
-A prospectus, table of contents, and perhaps an introduction and sample chapters. Or you may elect to send the entire manuscript. All manuscript material should be typed or printed out, double-spaced, on one side of the paper.
We will not accept or respond to manuscripts, proposals, or queries sent by e-mail or fax.
Received in the mail today (hard copy):
Dear Editor-in-Chief:
I retrieved your "Book Proposal Guidelines" from your website and I have a couple of questions:
1) Is it correct for me to say that you will respond to no email, even a letter such as this?
2) I have a formal book proposal of 78 pages and 17,994 words. It contains the information you list in paragraph two of the "Guidelines," including four double-spaced samples, fifty-seven pages, of the manuscript chapters/sections. The first seventeen pages of the book proposal are single-spaced. Will a printed copy of the book proposal accompanied by a cover letter meet your "Guidelines" for submitting a book proposal to PublishingCompany?
Thank you for your kind consideration.
Sincerely,
Author, PhD.
How I wish:
Dear Author,
We don't actually give a shit about spacing.
Sincerely,
Me
P.S. PhD.? Really?
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I thought you didn't accept unsolicited manuscripts at all...
ReplyDeleteAHAHAHA. That's amazing.
ReplyDeleteOh, we accept them, we just don't usually *accept* them that often, if you catch my meaning. Once in a while though. (And there's a big difference of course between unsolicited proposal by Respected Up'n'Coming Religious Academic recommended by Senior Academics A,B,&C; and Joe Blow who's written a book about how he's got everything more figured out than you and you should listen to him.)
ReplyDeleteIsn't it though? Seriously, the stuff we get sometimes just boggles.