Having recovered from my ego-bruising rejection, I decided to take a positive, proactive stance in the campaign to get my work published by someone besides myself. To that end, I have written and formatted my own rejection letter–you know, just to speed the process along and spare everybody some time, trouble, and pain:
Dear Agent/Publisher– In the event you decide to reject this manuscript, please check the appropriate box:
( ) I accidentally spilled coffee on the manuscript and decided not to bother.
( ) Your lead heroine reminds me of my sister in law, and I hate her.
( ) You used the ‘F’ word too many times and I was raised a devout skankless abstainer
( ) The ending is not prototypically happy and made my head explode.
( ) I have a terrible case of diarrhea and therefore my attention span is less than that of a two-year-old’s on a slushee and so I understand nothing that you wrote and it’s all your fault.
( ) Your long words confuse me. Don’t bother me again.
( ) Non-traditional narrative styles scare me. Shame on you.
( ) You didn’t suck my toes enough in your introductory letter. Learn some humility and learn to bend over.
( ) I spent my lunch whipping other authors into writing four books a year because they have name recognition and I’m just too tired to bother.
( ) Your hubris at self-publishing must be punished and I’m just the rat-bastard to do it.
Thank you, sirs, for the time it took you to check that box and put this back into the self-addressed stamped envelope I provided for you–I’ll slink away now to bother you no more and write in obscurity forevermore.
What do you guys think? Would it work
LMAO.
Gosh, I don’t know if it would work, but it is sure to crack someone up, hehehe.
Way to go on being proactive. 🙂
ROFL – It certainly might get someones attention!
2 bonus points for creativity 🙂
NO, no, no. We want to make it HARDER for them to reject us! Besides, what editor will be honest enough to recognize their true motivation in your list?
Anyhow you forgot, “I reject 98% of the stuff on my desk without looking at it. Your manuscript fell into that pile.”
Funny, but I agree with Roxie, you want to make it harder, not easier!
How about I wanted to publish it; but buying your book would put us over budget.
There is precedent! A really successful graphic designer sent his CV round printed on really nice paper, that had been balled up and made messy – it apparently really worked.
In any case, I’ve just been sprung from 4 unexpected days in hospital, where all I wanted the Other Half to bring in was all my Amy Lane books.
I didn’t actually allow anyone to read them, but you know when people do the pretending to be interested thing, this time they actually were a little taken aback at the covers for Cory, in a good way.
Of course there was no way in hell that I was going to explain exactly what they were, but instead said in a possessive voice ‘be careful, those are first editions!’
🙂
I have just found you and I think that I’m in love. 😉
And now I have to talk the nice people at Amazon into sending me your books.
With a couple of the editions mentioned here, it may just be funny enough to make them call you up for an interview. (Just the fact that you included it with the submission would be enough to get me.)