[neilmarr]

And aquisitions editors, Joy, are more than sensitive to such careful spelling. Many a manuscript is knocked back because spelling and grammar is just so darned annoying that you can't take a story or its characters seriously.

You know the greatest fault we find recently, though? It's authors (and amateur agencies) submitting work blanket-wise. They don't even visit pubslishers' websites to see what kind of books (which genres) they work with. So they do not follow simple guidlines like email query, synopsis and first two chapters as a taster and which genres are not considered.

These subs we do not reject out of hand (though most would consign the sender's addres to the junk mail box), we simply place them in the rejection file for the month (which is always bursting at the seams with nonsense) with a curt reply to say: "Do not spam us -- read our submissions guidlines. in plain sight to anyone who takes thirty seconds to look."

With word processors making the production of crap easier and email making mass simultaneous submission a matter of course, you would hardly believe what we're deluged with. I must have knocked back two dozen mass-mail submissions today alone, simply because they were so obviously bloody mailshots.

Wanna sift the slushpile some day, Joy? You'd be welcome. Neil