Major league no-no

So, one of my editor friends just got a partial manuscript that she liked: she took time out of her busy schedule to read it, think about it, talk it over with her colleagues, and ask to see more (and her response time was rapid by the standards of our industry).

And what did the author have to say? Not, "W00t!," or "Yay!," or even "Thank you." Nope. The author replied by saying he'd already sold the book somewhere else.

Folks, you wonder why publishers make reading over-the-transom stuff the last priority? It's because people pulls crap like this. Even if a publisher allows simultaneous submissions (and most don't, precisely to avoid this sort of thing), it's mandatory that you inform editors when your work is no longer available for consideration.

This isn't quite as bad as the clown who 13 years ago thought it was just fine to sell the same story to Carolyn and me (when we were editing Tesseracts 6) and to one of our competitors without telling any of us. But it still sucks.

Writers making submissions: show a little professionalism, please!

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site