“You’ve got no mail!”
Most authors will probably tell you the second-most tortuous aspect of getting published is the waiting game—the first, of course, being the first time one opens the editor’s notes on one’s painstakingly edited masterpiece. “Bleeding red ink” afflicts writers as mercilessly as it does accountants.
Be that as it may, waiting six weeks to ninety days to howsoever long a publisher requires to process your submission crawls in glacial timekeeping. One fairly tears out one’s hair after each edgy trip to the mailbox or tortuous click of the mouse. Each time authors tell themselves certainly not enough time has elapsed, they refuse to raise any expectations, and yet, each time their carefully dampened hopes are dashed.
How long does it take to read 80,000 words, anyway? Not much time, actually, but it does take quite a bit to read 800,000 or even a million. Unfortunately, screening editorial assistants, editors, and marketing personnel don’t read only your manuscript. They read everyone else’s as well. If an editor has interest enough in the story to take notes along the way, it takes longer still.
So. What happens to your query when it falls into Xchyler Publishing domain? Let me tell you.
The Slush Pile
First, your query comes into the Submissions inbox, where the editor-in-chief (that’s me) does a very rough sifting in order to make assignments. At this phase, only the query letters in the email are reviewed. No documents are downloaded or opened, which is why your email is so important. A “here’s my stuff” email isn’t going to get very far. You have to make me want to clog up my hard drive with your files.
If you have not included all the prerequisite materials, you will hear about it (second chances for limited time only). If your manuscript’s genre or target audience doesn’t fit with XP’s business model, we’ll let you know pretty quickly. We don’t accept screenplays, TV scripts, or seek product licensing agreements. We publish books. We don’t do Regency romance or historical fiction. We focus on suspense/ thrillers and fantasy with all its subgenres, including paranormal and Steampunk.
XP does not reply to emails asking about the status of submissions (but we may write a blog post about it).
“That looks interesting.”
From the slush pile, we forward your query letter to both marketing and editorial staff. At our weekly staff meeting, editors express interest or disinterest in the manuscript. If no one finds it enticing, our editorial assistant gets the assignment. The marketing staff will also review it and make their recommendations.
Next, the appropriate personnel receive all the material the writer has sent and will have 2-4 weeks for review, depending upon their current workload (which, at the moment, is quite heavy). If the editor finds the manuscript has promise, they will request its entirety. If not, there are still more steps to follow before rejection notices are sent out.
Once the editor has finished screening the submission materials (either the initial chapters or complete manuscripts), they fill out a 90-question form. Every manuscript goes through this process. With its computable data, our Editorial and Marketability Matrix helps us to quantify your manuscript and give it as objective an evaluation as possible. Because we also require every accepted author to fill out the same form, the essay questions provide us a jumping-off point to start the editorial process should we acquire the property.
The Questionnaire
The first twenty questions or so pertain to the facts of the query letter: author’s name, date of submission, genre, materials reviewed, etc. That’s the easy part. But, judgments start even here, with questions like “genre per author” and “genre per editor”. Red flags pop up when those two don’t agree. Other questions such as “target market” and “number in series” all influence our final decision.
Next, we analyze the author’s craft. Do they have an identifiable voice? Do they understand good storytelling? Do they have more to say than just the surface plot? We ask the editors to identify and critique the weaknesses and strengths of the author’s voice, the main dramatic queries (both physical and spiritual), themes, subtext, and opening and closing chapter bookending. Does the author understand the heart of their story?
After we’ve analyzed the story’s soul, we look at the construction—the author’s technical skills. We critique the weaknesses and strengths of the introduction, initiating/inciting action, rising action, climax, and conclusion/denouement. Does the author understand how to build a good story? Does it have a solid foundation? Are its walls sound? Are its beams and trusses locked in place? Or will it all come tumbling down with a good stiff wind?
Then, we move on to the characters: protagonist, antagonist, secondary and even tertiary characters. We ask for their strengths and weaknesses. Does the author know their characters? Do they leap off the page? Or are they difficult to remember? Does each character have a distinctive voice? Do they get lost in a sea of characters that not even the author can keep straight?
Next, come thirty-three (33) questions wherein we ask the evaluator (editor, marketer, author) to grade the author’s skills on a scale of one to ten. I have decided to list them all so that interested writers can see the variety of points that bear weight in our evaluation.
- Overall recommendation
- Author compliance (Did the author include all the query material? Did they follow the submission guidelines? Did they respond quickly to requests and other communication? It all matters.)
- Return on investment (Is the anticipated profit worth the work that will be required to publish it?)
- Level of sexual content
- Level of coarse or crass language
- Level of gratuitous violence and/or graphic gore
- Level and/or treatment of proscribed behaviors
- Grammar skills
- Vocabulary skills
- Rate author’s voice
- Rate the theme
- Rate the subtext
- Rate the story arc
- Rate the protagonist
- Rate the antagonist
- Rate the secondary and tertiary characters
- Communication (Does the author get onto the page what’s in his/her head? Does the manuscript make sense or is the reader constantly confused?)
- Logic arguments (Is the author convincing enough that the reader is willing to suspend their disbelief?)
- Continuity (Does the author contradict him/herself? Does he/she keep his/her facts straight?)
- Overall character development
- Plot development
- Heart of the story
- The hook (Do the opening chapters—the all-important first three—reach out and grab the reader and compel them to keep reading?)
- Originality
- Popularity
- Following (If this is one of a series, will this book inspire the reader to push on to the next installment?)
- Niche (Can this book carve its own place in the market?)
- Taboos (All genres have things the readers expect and what they don’t. Does this book cross those lines? Is the plot compelling enough that it outweighs the transgression?)
- Shelf appeal (Does this manuscript lend itself to a great eye-catching cover/illustration?)
- Marketability (How easy will it be to reach this manuscript’s target audience?)
- Rate synopsis
- Rate manuscript submission
- Rate author intent (Judging by the query materials and/or any other interaction with the author, how easy do they seem to be to work with? How capable of functioning in the sometimes rigorous editorial process?)
These scores are then averaged. Each manuscript to make it out of the inbox requires a minimum of three separate evaluations (two editors and one marketer). Those three scores are then averaged to receive the overall score.
The EIC and head of marketing then review the query material and the questionnaires with staff recommendations. They carefully balance both the manuscript’s literary and commercial strengths and weaknesses against the current publishing goals of the company until they reach a final decision.
At that point, XP will do one of three things:
- Send a rejection letter.
- Send an invitation to rewrite and resubmit the manuscript.
- Refer the matter to the Legal Department which will then contact the author to extend an offer. 7s and higher have an excellent chance of receiving a contract offer from XP.
Along with the invitation to submit a Rewrite and Resubmit, the author will receive copies of the Editorial and Marketability Matrix for their manuscript with the aim of facilitating their ultimate success. However, the author decides how best to use that information.
In the event a contract offer is extended and accepted . . . well, that’s another post altogether.
Why so many questions? Why go to so much trouble? Why invest so much time?
Simple. We want great storytellers in our organization and understand that betimes they require a bit of spiffing up to be known as such. We want to ensure we pick out the real nuggets scattered in the fool’s gold. Fools we would be should we let them slip through our fingers because they’re obscured by a bit of mud.
Credit where credit is due.
Here at XP, we live, eat and breathe writing blogs and books. You never know so much that you cannot learn something new. Our favorite is author and editor
