how should I act about this? 9 months ago I submitted my first novel to three publishers and they all rejected it. No one gave me any feed-back on it. Now I'm about to finish a major rewriting of the same novel, one that will make it quite different to the first one and I was thinking: Could I submit to two of those publishers again even though they already rejected it the first time? I don't want to exclude them because they are two of the biggest publishing houses here and since it's a pretty small country we don't have as many of them as in the US or UK. If I do so, Should I tell them I have already sent a previous version of it before or just pretend like it's new and hoping they won't recognize it or won't bother?
Here people usually submit directly to the publishers, they have open submissions and most people don't go through an agent.
Yes, it is a different novel essentially since you've changed a large portion of it. The worst they will do is reject it again. May want to check if they have guidelines on re-submission though. No harm.
thanks for your advice, I'll check the publishers sites for indications for this particular situation. Actually the entire plot has been changed, the only thing that could make someone recognize it are the names and the basic start point of the main character. But then again there's nothing saying it will be the same person to read this one that read the first version of it, Im sure they have a few readers and it could be someone else. When I submitted ther first time I also had mail correspondance with one person from one of the publishers and I got the impression they keep some kind of register of the scripts they have received, but do they eliminate those notes once they have rejected it or is it possible they keep it and could see I have already submitted? I have changed even the name of the novel too, I finally found the perfect name for it the other day, I was never completely satisfied with the old one.
If you received no feedback, you probably need to do a LOT of work on your manuscript. Form letter rejections generally mean the story shows so little promise *from the submission editor's perspective) that it's not worth his or her time to put effort into critique. When you start getting feedback, you are probably a lot closer to target, even if the critique is brutally harsh. In general, don't submit the same pice of writing, no matter how drastically revised, to the same publisher that rejected it. They will very likely know you submitted it previously (they do keep records), and you will only succeed in annoying them.
That is exactly what I am doing. After gaining some well needed insight and learning more about the craft of writing I think I might have spotted a good many of the problems with it and decided to do a lot more work on it to make it better, because I still believe it can be good. really? Are they that severe? One chance is all you get and then no more? Not even if I mention the previous contact so they can decide for themselves? Ugh, I wish I had friends here that I could ask for the rules about how i works HERE!
It's generally considered bad practice to re-submit a story, even if you've worked it over. It won't always result in an immediate rejection, but a lot of editors will think it rude if they recognise it. There have been occasions, however, where an editor has sent me a rejection, but said that they wouldn't be adversed to seeing a reworked version of the story.
In fact, I thought about doing just that you never know... I think it's better to no assume the don't want anything to do with it. nice to hear that someone else thinks I should too
If there is a 99% chance that I would annoy them by sending again, and a 1% chance that they would consider it, then I would sent it again. Why should I care if they get annoyed if I'm never going to have anything further to do with them anyhow? Sure if you hope to submit different material to them at a later date it would be a consideration, but otherwise, but luck if they get upset.
exactly. it is just that these are two of the most important publishers for this genre and I don't want to exclude them so I think I'll try, but I have sent a mail asking, actually, and will wait for the reply. Either way it's not completely ready yet so it's not really urgent.
I got the first reply today and she (the same woman I have had contact with before) said "you are always welcome to resubmit revised manuscripts", so that made me really happy! that was one out of two
