by Beth Fowler
Have you ever thought that editor should appear in your thesaurus under devil somewhere between Beelzebub and fiend? I felt that way until I become one…an editor, that is.
My job, like every editor's job, was to acquire, repair and publish manuscripts. Although I had only 50 manuscripts to edit and enjoyed a flexible deadline, the less tutoring and rework I had to do the greater the odds were that that author's work would be published in the anthology. (Write "Travel anthology" in the subject line of an email to
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for your free copy.)
Generally, manuscripts submitted to me were interesting and demonstrated an understanding of the basic principles of composition. Deviations from standard practice, however, made "me want to cry and run away," as Simon & Schuster's (http://www.simonsays.com) Rebecca Saletan put it. I developed sympathy for editors who hadn't thought that my submissions were brilliant. Maybe, just maybe, the editors were right.
Follow these tips to boost the chances of editors reading your queries and manuscripts through tears of gratitude (not despair).
Client Management
by Jenna Glatzer
You finally broke into a market you’d been dying to break into. Some Big Magazine has hired you to write an 800-word article for their front-of-the-book, and you’re ecstatic! You work hard as can be, proofread like crazy, and send it in, sitting by your inbox and waiting for the note back telling you how fabulous your article is, and by the way, where have you been all their lives? They want you to write all the articles in the magazine from now on!
But days turn into weeks, and no response. You check in and get “Thanks for the article! Sorry I haven’t had time to look at it yet. I’ll get back to you as soon as I have a chance to read it.”
Hmm. Is this the same editor who told you the article absolutely HAD TO be in in 10 days so it could make it into the September issue? How come she now has weeks to sit on it? Grumblegrumble. You could have spent more time researching if you had all this extra time.
But, you tell yourself, that’s okay. She’s busy. Maybe there’s been a scheduling change. I’m sure everything is fine.
