Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Aaarghh!

I'm always surprised by some of things I run across when searching for markets.  Take this morning, I found a new press looking for short stories to fill several anthologies.  As I read one of the calls I discovered that the post was riddled with spelling and grammar mistakes.  Okay, not so good, but Duotrope says this is a paying market.  And this is where I decided NOT to send potential submitters.  Payment is based on the time the publisher/editor has to spend editing.  Please!  If he's not editing his own work how well is he going to edit yours? 

Payment shouldn't be based on how many hours the editor has to spend doing his job.  And just because he likes your story idea but wants a total rewrite to make it an entirely different story, you shouldn't be penalized, especially if you sent in a clean manuscript.  Respect yourself and your work.  Dealing with someone who believes his job is more important than yours isn't part of the job description.  Yes, editors are important, they help you make sure the story is the best it can be, but not to the point that you're penalized for his workload.

6 comments:

Al Tucher said...

Can't say I ever heard that one before.

sandra seamans said...

It was new to me, Al. The biggest problem for me was he was only paying a penny a word and was going to cut it down to 1/4 cent a word if he had to do any work. My thought was everyone was going to get the 1/4 cent no matter what they did.

Randi said...

I know which market you're talking about Sandra and I came to the same conclusion!

When you're going to penalize others so harshly, you should (at the very least) be able to edit your own submission guidelines.

sandra seamans said...

Welcome to the Corner, Randi!! I love your darkmarkets site. And yes, if you want writers to edit their own work you should edit your own as a good example :)

Stephen D. Rogers said...

Hey Sandra,

Do you think I can bill the editor for the mental edits I did while reading the guidelines?

Stephen

sandra seamans said...

Would be great if you could, Stephen. I know I wanted to do some editing myself.