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We returned a manuscript we really liked with three significant suggestions to make it better. Here are a few select excerpts from the submitter's (I hesitate to use the word "author") reply:
1. "I can't believe it took you two months to come back to me with these suggestions. I don't think that is very good customer service if you want me as an author."
2. Two of my friends, both very honest about my labors, think the manuscript as presented is perfect. So does my wife of fifteen years, who has an English degree and teaches the subject. Do you have an English degree?"
And finally,
3. "I don't think I am going to make any of these changes. Do you want to publish my work or don't you?"
I attached and returned the picture below to him via email and bid him farewell.
12 comments:
Wow! Do you think he would walk into a job interview with an attitude like that and call his not so future boss stupid?
Ted,
Am assuming the title of his book is not "How to win friends and influence people" ?
Sheesh.
Hope all is well.
Too many authors will never become writers because they are stuck on their own writing, the ‘quality’ and ‘perfection’ of their language. What they fail to realize is the worth and impact of their work is not what their words imply, but what they make readers INFER.
It is the publisher’s quest to create books of good READING.
“Editors are nothing but failed writers,” whined the rejected wannabe.
Shrugged the editor, “So are most writers.”
Several years ago I drove to Yellowstone. After paying the entrance fee the park rangers handed me (and everyone who entered) a bright yellow flyer with the word "warning" in very large letters. The flyer also had a picture of a buffalo head butting a vistor. The text explained that buffalo seemed like sedate animals, but were in fact very dangerous and you should not approach them. Driving up over a hill and arriving at an observation area, I was incredulous to see a young man several hundred yards from his car, in a pasture, surrounding a buffalo and attempting to pet it.
Coincidence? I think I met this man before you did.
Mark Wilensky
The Elementary Common Sense of Thomas Paine
LOL! That takes real gonads to be so ignorant and rude!
Ted,
Wow. Can I be the judge...?
S-T-U-P-I-D
Well, perhaps that fella is more pathetic than stupid, and I think they often go hand in hand.
J.D.
From the supersized ego I'm wondering if he is a politician?
John Fox
LOL Fox: I found out recently he did not pay his takes, is "disappointed" by his "mistake," and is up for a cabinet position in Washington. make sure you continue to work hard and support him.
RK
Then again, the guy had at least three customers ready to purchase the book locked in.....
Let us pile on the arrogant, uncompromising author while we forget that so locked into their vision, their agenda and tradition, too often publishers and editors can behave the same way.
You can slam the publisher, but if you as an author are trying to get your book published by a certain publishing company, doesn't it make sense to follow the editor's directions? If you expect the publisher to take a risk on you as an author [especially an unknown first time author], put his money up front, invest his time getting your book ready and then invest his time to market your book and then you can't follow basic directions and guidance? Besides, as an author, if you can't take corrective advice from an editor, what are you going to do when you get your first bad review? Frankly a "perfect" flawless rating from 2 friends and a similar rating from the English teacher wife on a manuscript by a probable first time [and arrogant] author sounds like a marketing disaster to me.
When Ayn Rand's editor of ATLAS SHRUGGED suggested that the climatic 90-page speech by John Galt be shortened...
"You'd cut the Bible?" replied Rand
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