A Thousand Submissions
and Only One of Them Old-Fashioned
Okay, not quite a thousand. But I’ve submitted batches of increasingly-edited versions of the THE UNWICKED WITCH, like, a lot. To both literary agents and small Canadian publishers.
How many submissions? I’m scared to count.
Here, I’m at a local North Vancouver bistro called Scratch Kitchen celebrating two more submissions of THE UNWICKED WITCH.
Unfortunately, most Canadian presses are vague as to what they publish. Read a few of our books, they say. You can buy them here, they say. Thankfully, both Guernica Editions and Wolsak and Wynn Publishers were clear. They both have commercial imprints that include speculative fiction.
️Guernica requested the normal email submission, easily put together and sent off in thirty minutes or so. However, Wolsak and Wynn wanted the old-fashioned mail-in submission (SASE, postcard, query letter, synopsis, and first chapter).
️The whole process turned out to be so charming! The way writers submitted before the internet.
️Printing off twenty pages at the library and buying two full-size envelopes, one for the SASE and the other to mail the submission. The toughest part was wandering down Lonsdale Avenue searching for a postcard. (They mail it back so you know your submission was received.) I finally found one lone postcard with cats on the front from a dollar store/post office, ha, ha!
️But the receipts add up:
$1.96 - postcard
$2.80 - two full-sized envelopes
$5.25 - printing 20 pages
$10.55 - stamps for the postcard, SASE, and the mailing envelope
A total of $20.56. No big deal to send to one publisher. But can you imagine if all publishers required mail-in submissions? The cost would climb into the hundreds fairly quickly.
I wonder if the mail-in policy means Wolsak and Wynn gets higher quality submissions? I mean, you’d have to be pretty sure of your story to spend the time and money to submit. At the very least, you’d think twice.
THE UNWICKED WITCH Mood Board
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Every time I submit THE UNWICKED WITCH, I’m so excited and full of hope. But, if these particular submissions result in more rejections, you won’t hear about them again because I’ll be so sad. But if either results in acceptance, I’ll paint the internet with my celebrations.
Fingers crossed (and toes too)!