I feel obligated to send the guy a polite rejection notice.
Why?
What about the SF/Fantasy/Occult/Horror genres leads you to believe that there *isn't* a market for another masturbatory misogynistic adolescent power fantasy?
If you didn't invite the submission, I really don't think you should feel the need to play "revise and resubmit" with this guy.
I think I'd say no, no, and no. A civil, perfunctory letter will do.
These guys are rarely homicidal. Have a little fun with him.
You should attempt to write a rejection letter that exactly mimics the style of his work, and recommend that he amp up the tits and gore. Suggest he really try and focus on the character arc of the rejected hero finding acclaim and understanding through righteous vengeance and smokin' babes. Suggest he read some Rand.
Letter's confusing. You're not a publisher, but you let the dude think he is, and read his crappy draft?.
Yeah, I get undergrads handing me poems a lot. If I notice that's what's happening in time, I just hand it back, because once it gets among your stuff, they want to know how it makes you feel, and no one likes being told their writing makes you feel like someone's mom took his self-esteem too seriously when he was a child.
11: I get the impression that Dude didn't wait for clarification before dropping off his slush-pile fodder.
12: Well, your grandmother really seems like a sweet lately. Yes, and she certainly went through a lot. Mmm, I enjoy fall colors too.
15: Usually it's more like, "Do you realize you just used the words 'darkness,' 'pain,' and 'burning' in two out of every three lines?
Darkness, pain and burning
pain of burning darkness comes.
I see you in the classrom
and I am burning again: pained darkness
pains me like my darkening burns.
McBeef! I cry, alone.
Would it be in poor taste for me to stage a reading of "Richard McBeef" on the quad next week? I'm tempted.
Yet again, and maybe this is my internalization of oppressive norms of masculinity, but I totally don't see the problem, since you don't owe the writer a rejection letter. I would pretend it never happened.
Despising people for being less cool than oneself is bourgeois.
Labs, you're as thin-skinned as a little girl, you know that?
Would it be in poor taste for me to stage a reading of "Richard McBeef" on the quad next week?
No, just do it better than these guys.
And don't use puppets or bad Asian accents.
Ogged, you little persian princess, you'd better shut that purty mouth or I'll McBeef you.
Apo, that video is awesome.
Even if it were good, you should advise him to see a therapist. Otherwise I don't really see the issue here. In fact, I'm wondering, if you don't hold yourself out as a publisher, why you would consider sending him a letter at all? I mean, shouldn't your letter just read: "I'm not a publisher"?
"... My business name suggests that I'm a publisher. "
This is confusing. If you aren't a publisher you shouldn't be pretending to be a publisher by for example sending out polite rejection notices.
31: Well, what if they e.g., self-publish comics and zines? That makes them a de facto publisher, even if the chance they would ever publish somebody else's work is small.
Relative-newbie question: whence "Mineshaft"?
Newbies answer their own questions by reading the complete Unfogged archives.
Oh, fine. But you really should compile a greatest hits archive like B does. Except not all about fucking. Except why not all about fucking?
Wrongshore, did you ever get a fruit basket?
Another thing: If it was really good, you wouldn't send him an acceptance letter. So it makes no sense to send him the inverse.
32
Well then they should politely explain that they just publish their own stuff and apologize for any misunderstanding.
11, 13, 31: I publish my own stuff. I publish my friend's stuff. I'm open to the idea of expanding the set of people I publish. I'm not an "established publisher". I probably wouldn't publish anyone without getting to know them personally. If the sample Joe Random handed to me were something that interested me more, however, I might start trying to get to know them with the intent of publishing them.
2: It makes me feel good to get honest feedback, and it doesn't make me feel good to put something out there and get silence back, and I'm applying the Golden Rule.
3: "The genre doesn't need" doesn't mean the same thing as "There isn't a market for".
40 pretty much gets it right.
This probably doesn't apply to the AtM writer, since it sounds like the "request" to look at this guy's work was more of a dump-and-run, but I have a firm policy to ask, before looking at anything, "What kind of feedback would you find helpful?"
It's a good way of establishing expectations beforehand. It also allows you to say no upfront -- "Oh, sorry, I don't do proofreading, just editing" -- or set a fee, or say, "I should warn you, I'm known as the Angel of Death." .
Thanks! That basket was just bulging with fruit. Tasty, testie fruit.
I'm surprised that the fruit basket thing is only a year and a half old.
I publish my own stuff. I publish my friend's stuff. I'm open to the idea of expanding the set of people I publish. I'm not an "established publisher".
But do you want to become one? Whether you want to see yourself as something approaching an established publisher or just some person who publishes comic books on the side has a rather large effect on how you should deal with this guy.
It makes me feel good to get honest feedback, and it doesn't make me feel good to put something out there and get silence back, and I'm applying the Golden Rule.
That's sweet of you, but this is not at all how established publishers act. Unsolicited queries that aren't any good get rejection letters and no feedback. If you want to position yourself as an up-and-coming potential publisher, doing just that would be the expected thing. Obviously you don't have to, of course; the reason publishers do this is that they're buried in avalanches of slush and have no time to give feedback even if they wanted to. It's your call.
OK, now that I've had the fruit basket and have looked at a few of Tia's advice columns from a blong time ago, will someone tell me where "mineshaft" comes from? Or at least show me the workaround for printing out the entire archive to peruse on the can. I don't bring my laptop in the lavatory, no thank you.
Wrongshore, this ought to point you in the right direction.
As someone who used to read and [usually] reject over-the-transom mss at a now-defunct SF magazine: Be polite, send a short note thanking him for letting you see his work and say that you are only self-publishing for the foreseeable future. Do nothing else. That way his ego is not affected and the blog I-hate-Small-Publisher does not come into being.
If you become the publisher who writes sweet, inspiring critiques in rejection letters, you could do a segment for This American Life about how it crushed your soul and you had to stop doing it.
Oh, thanks. And I was just about to hit 'print'.
46: Just some person who publishes comics on the side. Actually, it's publishing on the side of making comics on the side of doing my unrelated day job. I'm only trying to explain how it was that my answer to "are you a publisher?" was to hem and haw long enough for the guy to shove the excerpt into my hands.
I understand that a real publisher would send a terse rejection at best; ATM is here to tell me how to optimize for universal happiness and/or the amusement of cruel, cruel people, not how to optimize for acting like a real publisher.
you could do a segment for This American Life
I assume the New Yorkers and regular online readers already saw this, but just in case, here's The Onion on TAL.
Somehow I think "universal happiness" and "the amusement of cruel, cruel people" are not goals that go together well. Maybe you should decide which one is more important to you.
54: The best part about ATM is that I don't have to decide which goal to go for before all the advice is in.
42
"2: It makes me feel good to get honest feedback, and it doesn't make me feel good to put something out there and get silence back, and I'm applying the Golden Rule. "
The problem with this is that feedback can be taken as a sign of interest and an invitation for further interaction. If you don't want this a polite pro forma rejection letter might work better.
I'd just ignore it. A rejection letter implies that there is something he could have done to have an acceptable admission. If he pursues it, make your eyes wide and suggest that if he were to publish his ideas on a fanfic page, he might get lots of feedback.
The Golden Rule says: if I put out that kind of crap, I wouldn't want honest feedback, either.
Suggest he make a short YouTube piece instead.
IIRC (and I might not) Fantagraphics, who's the biggest name in badminton art comics, often writes back personalised ploite but gnerally devastating rejection letters to people.
I disagree with all these Golden-Rule-haters. A response is courteous, honesty is respectful, and it's good to put out into the world what you wish you'd get back from others.
I don't think he's going to start an I-hate-So-and-So blog and I don't think sending one definitive rejection letter (mentioning that you're a tiny self-publisher) is going to unleash hordes of slavering would-be writers.
You could break it to him gently. You could say, hey, right now this is a novel. It could be a comic book; it could be a screenplay, too. It could be a novella. It could be a short story. It could be something you scribbled on a napkin. It could be a napkin that you quickly tucked in your pocket. It could be an idea you had once that you were going to write but didn't have a pen. It could be a silly idea. Something you should never tell a soul. There, there. Don't be sad. Grindhouse is still in the theaters. Treat yourself to a matinee.
I'd also document exactly what it was he gave you so there's no future claim that you stole his work and used it in your own. Successful authors and songwriters won't even touch submissions that come over the transom because years later someone pops up with a lawsuit claiming bestseller X was stolen from the manuscript they asked they author to take a look at.
Billy Joel got sued in this manner several times- each time he had more shows we'd call it the "I got sued again, please buy more tickets tour." Of course, if you never plan to be successful enough at writing to be lawsuit-worthy, don't sweat it.
61: Also, mom's on the roof.
62: Yeah, the other question I was going to ask was "should I go ahead and steal the one interesting idea I did glean from his excerpt, although due to getting only two pages midchapter, it's hard to tell if that idea was something he actually intended to express rather than my own extrapolation?"
Have you poked through Teresa Nielsen Hayden's archives?
Besides that my only advice would be to avoid suggesting any relationship beyond the most professional. Suggesting that he see a therapist, for example, would cross the boundaries I'm imagining.
You people have no heart.
Tell him Joe D LOVED it and wants to meet him. But Joe is going to pretend he doesnt know the him bc Joe wants him to act out on of the characters for him.
Then, give him JoeD's address.
"Sir, I am in the smallest room in the house. I have your manuscript before me. Soon it will be behind me."
Otherwise, what DE said.
"should I go ahead and steal the one interesting idea I did glean from his excerpt."
Um, no. So the sample is two pages long and contains at least one good idea--good enough to be worth stealing--but you feel the need to shit all over this guy--why?--based on Norman Spinrad's essay, "The Emperor Of Everything"? It's early and I haven't finished my coffee, and I'm afraid this reads a bit uncharitable, but I think you should start to question your own authority on these matters.
I'm sorry, I just don't see much "Golden Rule" applying here.
68-69: One or more of my questions may have been tongue-in-cheek.
And one or more of my responses may have been humorless. Still, I think you have the duty now of posting an excerpt of the excerpt, so that I can either (a) laugh, cry, and sigh a big sigh of relief that this is really much worse than anything I have written, or (b) enter a closet, fold myself into the fetal position and ponder my incapacity to tell bad from good.
It's really much worse than anything you've written recently at the Mineshaft. Trust me on this.
Oh no! text! We love you still, come back!
[muffled cries, anguish, sounds of being in a closet]
I think that's right. Or I should say: fap, fap.