We’re now deep in our yearly reading period, and there are a good number of manuscripts in the inbox. It feels like birthday mornings to open up Submittable and see what’s appeared overnight (thank you!). But now I remember what the hardest thing is—it’s the fact that all these manuscripts are competent. Many are very strong. Almost all of them that I’ve read so far seem like they are of publishable quality.
But we have room for maybe three, four, maximum five manuscripts next year. Which means that ‘publishable’ and ‘competent’ and even ‘really good’ aren’t enough; which means that when I send out rejection notes, they don’t mean your work is no good; they mean we just can’t publish everything we like. (That’s a real downer. I get really grabby and wanty when I read your work, building air-castles in which I can publish it all!) It’s hard to read your brilliant work and then to have to be practical about money (what we can afford to pay to print/how well we think the thing will sell compared to that printing cost) and time (how many books we can truly publicize and send for reviews and pack orders of). But it’d be a disservice to you and to our other writers and artists if we weren’t practical like that.
All this to say thanks for sending your work and for making June such an exciting time. I’m aiming to have read all the manuscripts by the end of July, and rejections will start going out in August (it always takes a while as I winnow through everything over and over), with the aim of notifying everyone by September this year. (If there’s a sudden influx of work right at the end of the month, this timing might change a bit.)