Reasons manuscripts get rejected...

[deborahjross]

Check out Wendy Loggia (editor at Delacorte) 's keynote address at SCBWI on reasons "almost there" manuscripts get rejected. Some are familiar, but this one was new to me:

4. The writer seems like a difficult person to work with. Wendy always Googles an author’s name before offering a contract. She says she may be prompted to change her mind about signing up an author if they share too much information in their blog, if they tend to blog a lot about how hard writing is, if they blog about being rejected many times, if they publicly bash a book she’s worked on, or if they bash a colleague in the business who is her friend.

Comments

[deborahjross.livejournal.com]

I agree. There are negative reviews, either because the book really wasn't that good or else just not to the reviewer's taste (which is always interesting -- "I didn't care for it, but it's brilliant"). And then there are nasty reviews, where what's going on is not a reaction to the book itself, but a verbal tantrum on the reviewer's part. You are so right, these tell the reader only of the reviewer's bile. And spleen. And a few other physiological/anatomical parts.

So if you were an editor about to invest a good portion of your already overpressured time in a new writer, would you take that into account?

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

So if you were an editor about to invest a good portion of your already overpressured time in a new writer, would you take that into account?
you know, I think I wouldn't. That's probably the historian in me -- I look at text alone as much as possible.

[deborahjross.livejournal.com]

If the text is good enough, sure. I hope that otherwise wonderful stories aren't being passed over because of the defects in personality of the authors. (There may be cases where editors refuse to work with an author because s/he is just too much trouble, but very few.) I think the problem comes when an editor is faced with a choice between stories that are promising but will need work.