Can you say "stupid," boys and girls?

If you’re looking for entertainment, try a week dealing with manuscript submissions. The sheer arrogance of some would-be-published is amazing—and usually in inverse proportion to the quality of their work.

Sound harsh? Stay with me.

Zumaya Publications is closed to subs until next summer. Our quotas for ’06 and ’07 have been filled since January, and ’08 will be done shortly. It’s bad manners to expect someone to sign a contract now with no expectation that their book will see daylight until 2009.

There are two exceptions, however. One is for a project already on the ’08 schedule—an anthology of short stories on the theme of King Arthur. The other is a standing call for collections of true ghost stories like our recently published Gray Zone Wanderers. Submissions for the first are to go directly to the editor in Oz. For the second, I set up a special email address, since the one I usually use for submissions is now on an auto-responder.

Within minutes of my activating the special address, I received a query for a fantasy novel.

Most publishers would simply have deleted the query. I chose to respond with some facts, in what I suspected was a vain hope the sender had half a professional bone in their body. I pointed out that “closed” meant closed--as in “not accepting new queries or manuscripts except as noted.” I also said that using an email address that is clearly designated as being for a particular kind of submission as a bypass isn’t likely to endear the sender to the publisher.

Having had similar experiences in the past, I confess I expected a snarky response, and I wasn’t disappointed. I was chided for my “unpleasant” attitude and advised to “grow up.”

Now, remember, this is from someone who wants me to invest my time, energy and money in publishing their manuscript. Does the phrase “cold day in hell” come to mind? Did for me. I expect it would for any publisher--and we have long memories. We may even make a list and check it twice.

There appears to be a new breed of writer who believes that small and mid-sized presses are so desperate for material to publish there’s no need to observe their submission guidelines. That said publishers should be so grateful said writer has condescended to consider allowing them to publish their manuscript they’ll forgive a complete lack of professionalism.

Wrong.