Wednesday, March 16, 2011

WE DO NOT ACCEPT UNSOLICITED SUBMISSIONS!

I'm currently in the process of pitching Spandex to publishers. I worked on my pitch for about 3 months until I was happy with it, and now I'm just steadily sending it out to people. I'm just picking and choosing targets at the moment rather than trying a million publishers at once.
It's been an interesting process, and surprisingly a couple of companies have said they couldn't handle the gay angle...!
Some publishers' submission guidelines are quite shocking too. I won't name names, but at least a couple are quite dismissive, patronising and rude. Now I can kind of see where they're coming from. I did portfolio sessions for my day job at a con once, and a couple of the people I met thought it would be a great idea to phone me every day for 2 weeks afterwards to get work. No, it's not a good idea, whatsoever! So from that, I can see their frustation, and how they might be narked, but still, they should keep being professional.
But the one thing I really don't get is the companies who say WE DO NOT ACCEPT UNSOLICITED SUBMISSIONS. Really?? In this climate, you're that financially stable that you'd turn down a potentially good, money-making project (no I don't mean mine, I mean in general)? I find that a bit baffling, to be honest.

3 comments:

thekelvingreen said...

At the very least that whole thing about having worked in TV or film seems to have gone by the wayside and they're actually hiring comic writers now.

Mart said...

Maybe cos those guys never hit their deadlines.
While we're talking about comics, my comic wishlist is this:
- Please get Bendis off Avengers asap
- Please get Mike Carey off comics asap. Sooo booorrrinnggg (in my opinion)

thekelvingreen said...

Jeff Parker should have been writing Avengers years ago. I am baffled by Bendis' continued popularity when he hasn't written anything decent since Alias.