WRITERS LIFEGUARD: No Reply is the New “No Thanks”

Posted on | July 23, 2010 | 6 Comments

By Jules Older

After the positive work reports I’ve received in response to the last Writers Lifeguard, this note arrived:

Jules Older

“Well, Jules, I wish I could say things are looking up for me, but it’s really hard not to get discouraged with a capital D. After unsuccessfully hunting for a magazine staff job last summer/fall (and by unsuccessful, I mean not even getting a single response, e-mail or otherwise to any applications), I’m going through the self-torture again. Though I’ve rewritten my resume, and I network to the point where I feel like a stalker, once again, I have not received so much as an acknowledgment of receipt to any e-mails or applications.”

If the note hadn’t been from Cindy Hirschfeld, I would just have replied with something like, “Sorry, but keep at it.”

But I’ve worked with Cindy. I’ve edited Cindy. I once gave Cindy an award when, during a blizzard that caused a power outage in Colorado, she drove through said blizzard to a high peak so she could email me her story on time. She’s a strong writer with an unbeatable work ethic. If Cindy isn’t getting a response, something is very, very wrong out there.

I think I know what it is. She’s a victim of another paradigm shift: No reply is the new No thanks.

Godot knows, I’ve experienced my share of it. When my editor at the travel section of a New York daily retired, her replacement immediately stopped responding to my pitches. When I pitch a magazine for whom I’ve long written and for whom I still write, if my idea doesn’t find favor, they don’t bother responding.

And when a children’s editor wrote, ‘In the future, we won’t be responding to submissions unless we are interested,’ I took the time to reply. “As a writer and editor, please allow me to try and dissuade you from instituting a no-reply policy. Here’s why I think it’s a very bad idea.

“Writers put so much work and anxiety and heart into their manuscripts, it is cruel not to at least reply with a ‘Not for us, but best wishes’ letter. This is especially true in the era of the computer, when such replies can be generated with a single keystroke. Here, for example, is one of the replies I created in under a second:

“Thanks so much for letting me see your work. It has some good qualities — but in the end, it’s not for Ski Press. Good skill in finding a home for your words.

“Feelings aside, writers who never get a reply will never know if their submission never got to you, is still under consideration, and whether they should submit to the publisher down the road or keep waiting for your reply. And they will therefore follow up with ‘Did you receive it?’ letters that waste their time and yours.”

The editor replied that while she understood my feelings, “only 0.02% of the submissions we receive are published, so I’m sure you can understand that the time we already invest in submissions — just to read them — is not enormously productive.”

Her company’s “no reply” is the new “no thanks” policy, and it remains in force.

Cindy and I aren’t the only ones experiencing it. Bob Bone writes:

After my recent success in completing an assignment for a leading travel magazine (in that case, they called me), I followed up with a two-page, single-spaced hard-copy comprehensive proposal for another story for the same department. Although they apparently were satisfied with my work on the story they assigned, I haven’t heard a word in reply to the proposal.

When I raise this issue with other writers, some say, “Don’t blame the overworked editor.”

I do blame the overworked editor. Here’s why:

When I was an academic, I’d send stuff not to mags but to medical and psychological journals. While everyone eventually answered, some took six months to two years to do so, and the manuscript often came back dog-eared and torn. The explanation/excuse was always, ‘We’re just too busy/overworked/understaffed.’

I might have accepted that except for The Lancet, one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world. Everybody wanted to be published in The Lancet. Everybody submitted research to The Lancet. Yet the editor of The Lancet, the legendary Ian Munro, always returned my submissions in short order, in perfect condition, and with a gentle explanation of why he wasn’t going to run them.

Was he as busy as other editors? Much, much busier. He wrote most of the journal’s editorials, was involved both in good causes and cricket, and was father of five. Here, from his obituary, is a description of his dealings with authors:

“The Lancet received over 4,000 papers a year from around the world, and only one in eight made it into print. The unsuccessful authors would receive an exegesis thanking them for their flawed masterpiece and regretting that he must refuse it; nothing was ever ‘rejected.’ ”

Now that’s a paradigm shift I’d like to encourage.

Peace.

jules

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Jules Older (amazingly, no relation to Susan Older) is a freelance travel writer, the author of children’s books, the creator of the iPhone app San Francisco Restaurants, a speaker, a broadcaster and a consultant. Learn more about Jules here. To become a Lifeguard, just drop Jules a line at jules@julesolder.com, saying, “I’m a writer. Sign me up!”

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