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It’s okay to ask submission editors why they rejected your work, especially if you reached the full manuscript stage.
You might not like the answer, but you can ask.
I had one person whose unsolicited submission made it past the three chapters. I asked for a full manuscript. After reading and finding multiple problems, I gave general instructions on how to fix them and asked for a Revise and Resubmit (R&R). This is a huge stage to get to. Say out of 100 submissions, three make it past the full manuscript stage. Sure the R&R isn’t exactly happy, and there is no guarantee of sale even with an R&R (so don’t do it unless you agree with the changes recommended – more on that another day), but that is a long, long way into the process. You have something that someone enjoyed reading enough to give it a second chance.
When I rejected it, they very politely asked “if something is standing in the way of my manuscript being accepted.”
Yep. Those blue and red squiggles in Microsoft word. Sure a fantasy or sci-fi will have some for the weird words and names, but basics? Fix them. No squiggles.
The submission had gotten so far, and the author didn’t bother cleaning it up before hitting send.
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My Full Response: Your voice in the manuscript was fine. I asked for an R&R because I enjoyed the story and thought it had merit for a second consideration. I’m nice, but not re-read a manuscript just to be nice type of nice.
The copula issue is common – I mark it on over half of all authors I work with. And one of my favorite authors, I am constantly reminding him that Word has this thing called spell-check and he really needs to turn it on and use it before sending stuff to me.
The spell-check errors killed the submission. If a writer doesn’t care enough to make sure Word isn’t marking errors, I have a problem caring about editing. Can I trust them to listen to editing advice when they don’t even look for it when it is right in front of them?
Does that make sense? Again, one of my favorite authors sets off this pet peeve of mine – so the peeve gets fed pretty regularly. I try to slim it down when I can (it gets so heavy if I am not careful, and I hate to carry it around), so I stopped reading when those squiggles got to be too much.
Good luck.
Erin Penn
Editor
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So this poor soul shot themself in the foot. I had given them a second chance with the R&R; they didn’t get a third. The favorite author is under contract and can get away with being a computer Luddite. New folks, not so much.
About one in five unsolicited submissions fail this test. If the squiggles aren’t cleaned up, the writing has to be so amazing I don’t notice the squiggles. And that hasn’t happened yet. Remember your manuscript is passing two tests (1) is it a good readable story that the publisher can market and sell, (2) does the author show they have what it takes to be edited? Those squiggles tell a different tale than you want the publisher to read.