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Originally Posted by gmw
Neither system is perfect, but because the public system has more people involved - it seems to me - there is perhaps more of a chance that good books will eventually show through. A lot of this is still working itself out, but it does appear that the gatekeeper role assumed by the publishers is not one they can claim uncontested victory over.
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If your taste is aligned with the majority, sure. But there are also those satisfied with certain gatekeepers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
From what I read about trying to get published - and I've read a lot from a lot of different sources - it seems to me that publishers and agents have trouble dealing with the volume manuscripts they get. If you want I can find quotes for you suggesting that getting published is who you know rather than what you know, and that manuscripts may be rejected on the first page (or even before). I even have a published book here telling me how important it is to get the name of the person that will receive your manuscript so you can address them by name.
If I can believe such claims, then I cannot necessarily believe that a novel was rejected because it wasn't right for the publisher or business model, but may have been rejected simply because they didn't have time to look further, or because that particular first page didn't sit well with the acquisitions editor assigned. As the rejected author you (may) never get to find out why you were rejected, or how close your manuscript may have come to being accepted. And none of this gives me a whole lot of faith in the traditional publishing system, especially not when an alternative is becoming viable.
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Yes, they have trouble with the volume they receive but they're not afraid of "flooding the market" which was your previous entry.
If they did not follow submission guidelines, yes, they will be rejected, regardless of the manuscript's quality. (Of course it begs the question, do you want to read a writer who can't read/follow instructions?)
I'm not against self-publishing (and have self-published a few times myself), but there's been some ridiculous claims such as "returning a published author to the slush pile". There's no such hierarchy. Either your manuscript is submitted by an agent, or it's in the slush pile.