7.12.2003
On the writer’s market
[Posted 12:22 PM by James Panero]
New Criterion contributor R. J. Stove surfs in from Down Under:
I’ve only just started looking up this blog, and therefore
have only just been able to relish the examples of how
not to submit material to THE NEW CRITERION. Yep,
you certainly have scored some doozies there – and I
speak as a fairly battle-scarred veteran myself of
unpublishable contributions from those in regular
flight over the cuckoo’s nest.
The amazing (to my mind) thing is, every bookstore and
every public library in every American town bigger and
more salubrious than Dogpatch must have on its shelves
some perfectly adequate reference books about do’s and
don’ts for submitting material to reputable magazines. And
yet it’s perfectly obvious that nobody reads these
books. Publishing them must be about as sensible a
commercial proposition as tearing up $50 notes under the
shower.
Perhaps editors groaning under the weight of epistolary
dementia should get together and issue instructions to
would-be contributors on the lines of “Phrase
your submissions in accordance with what WRITERS’
DIGEST style guides [or whatever other guides the editor
finds more congenial] advocate, or else go away and leave
us alone.” This would at least force a few neophytes
to undertaking the terrifying labor of actually reading
a reference book or two. And that unwonted activity
might keep them off the streets, off their skateboards,
and out of editors’ hair for a while.
When I think that I live in terror of submissions being
rejected because of a clumsy stapler mark . . .