Quote Originally Posted by Decker View Post
So Somebody Else, was there any specific reason for dismissing 80 odd submissions? Besides like, bad ideas, horrible grammar, etc...?? Any tips you could give out?
There were a lot of really outlandish ideas - for example, the first submission I looked at was a story about how Hitler and Eva escaped the bunker, to go off and live in Brazil for a while, until Mossad found them and shipped them off in a crate to Israel.

Speaking of which, I am a bit of a Nazi when it comes to syntax and grammar - poorly written work offends me (and I don't mean spelling, that can be easily rectified).

Some were so dull they was a trial to read - nothing like dismissing a book after the 3rd line...

I remember one was entertaining, well written, &c. - but it was somewhat lacking in plot, so that failed.

Market forces are also an issue - publishing is a business, and if a book won't catch the mood, it won't sell. That, and telling the same story as someone else is a problem - if a big name author has just published a book on a subject, no-one is likely to do well trying the same thing.

Thing is - a book has to be entertaining, it has to be something that someone is happy to sit down and read - so if I couldn't happily do that (and I did have a sofa and endless tea), then the submission failed, and I read pretty much anything. (Although I'd have dismissed James Joyce for being a loon)

If you have written something, the best thing to do is to try it on your friends first - if they like it, then send it to several agencies. (Try friends first because it's cheaper... but they could be biased, of course). It's also worth checking what the agencies specialise in - it's no good trying to get specialists in children's literature to promote a hard-boiled detective novel... As I said before, most publishers will simply ignore any submissions - they have agencies to sort out the dross.

Remember, everyone thinks they have a book in them. In most cases, it's just gas.