Satire: The top ten form rejection slips

America's most beloved publishers, God love the bean counters and droids who work there, have been known to do some of their best work creating form rejection slips to send back home to writers along with their manuscripts.

I've spent years hacking into publishers' form rejection slip databases to uncover the top ten form rejection slips you never want to see anywhere close to your work:

** Thank you for sending us whatever you sent us. It doesn't meet our needs whatever they may be.

** We ahtimatically sneds back manuscrips which have mispeled words an other grandmalitcal errs in it.

** Inadvertently, we read your manuscript in the can and found an appropriate use for it. Thanks.

** Roadkill, we think, will appeal to more readers than your story.

** If we were the last publisher on the face of the earth and you were the last writer, nothing would happen, don't even think about it.

** Frankly, we don't care who you are, we're don't publish romance novels about lemmings since there's no happy ending in them.

** The last time we published stuff like yours, we got in trouble with the mob and/or the Homeland Security Department.

** Your stuff will choke a goat. We know and we will miss Little Bertie, may she rest in peace.

** When the brains were handed out, we didn't get enough to figure out just what the hell you're saying or if you're saying anything, but we appreciate the fact you hoped we'd measure up to the challenge of Chick Lit in latin.

** We were so discouraged when we saw your manuscript, we flat closed down the company because none of us want to work at a place where we might inadvertently see another unsolicited manuscript like yours.

from my Trickster's World weblog: http://communati.com/trick-falls/top-ten-form-rejection-slips-americas-beloved-publishers

I'd like to add one:

** Did we receive a manuscript from you or was it someone else? In case it was you, we would like to say thank you for submitting your work but we appear to have lost it. If you resubmit, we cannot guarantee that your second submission will not also be lost. In fact, we would be surprised if it wasn't. If it was someone else and not you, could you tell them that we have lost the submission and ask them to either resubmit or get lost.

Prehapse a smaller publisher would be less likely to loose your manuscript (less bureaucracy).

"Don't quit trying to find a day job"

"Feel free to submit further work if you don't mind us calling the police."


"The fact that this doesn't suit our needs doesn't mean that there aren't other publishers our there with no taste and mental deficiencies."

"No. We said no last time, and it's still no. Get it? No."

Shelagh wrote:

I'd like to add one:

** Did we receive a manuscript from you or was it someone else? In case it was you, we would like to say thank you for submitting your work but we appear to have lost it. If you resubmit, we cannot guarantee that your second submission will not also be lost. In fact, we would be surprised if it wasn't. If it was someone else and not you, could you tell them that we have lost the submission and ask them to either resubmit or get lost.

** We found the manuscript, but we seem to have lost the plot.

Hey, y'all are coming up with some great additions to the list. That makes it obvious we've all been around the block too many times.

Malcolm

How about a book of hallarious, stupid, and insane quotes from publishers' rejection letters. I wonder how well that book would sell.

We'll never know. It would get rejected.

It might sell. Look how well SMITH Magazine is doing with its one-sentence life stories book.

We can try to sell this mainstream, and then every time we get a rejection slip, we'll scan it in and create a chapter called "This book's route from the slush pile to you."

Malcolm

I love the Peanuts ones too. This is another:

“Dear Contributor: We have received your latest manuscript. Why did you send it to us? What did we ever do to hurt you?”

lin wrote:

We'll never know. It would get rejected.

It probably would.