Comments on: Contracts 101: Grant of Rights

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By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 10:40:43 +0000

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By: heather

heather — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 18:49:31 +0000

thank you. i think it was fate that i went to kerrs’ site to find a publishing date and wound up here. i very much appreciate your knowledge and willingness to share it.

By: Madeleine Robins

Madeleine Robins — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 18:02:25 +0000

Tor will indeed accept an unsolicited manuscript, and if they’re interested, that makes it easier to get an agent (Catch-22 as applied to publishing: an agent is more likely to be interested in an unknown if there’s already interest from a publisher; you can’t necessarily get a publisher’s interest without an agent). However, Tor gets (or used to when I was working there) something on the order of 200+ unsolicited manuscripts a week. And they look at them, or at least the first few pages. Since everyone from editors to interns is overworked (the theory is that in lean times everyone is working to capacity and no one is superfluous enough to be downsized) slush is rarely looked at on a daily, or even a weekly basis. If someone–usually an intern or editorial assistant–has the time to look at unagented slush they’ll go through a few: read the first couple of pages and decide whether someone should read further. When the piles of slush get to life-threatening height (I’m not kidding about this–the shelves pulled out of the wall of the managing editor’s office once and rained manuscripts down all over the place–the woman was damned lucky she wasn’t sitting at her desk when it happened) they’ll have a “slush party” with every available hand (sometimes from other departments) sitting down and going through manuscripts at high speed–sort of like speed dating, you’ve got maybe six pages to make an impact.

So the short answer is: I think Tor is a terrific place for a first-time author, but don’t be surprised or outraged if it takes them a year or more to read and respond to your submission. This isn’t done to torture you; it’s because of the press of business. And, as you say, Tor is one of the few publishers who will accept unsolicited manuscripts–for exactly this reason. Your call.

By: heather

heather — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 07:21:46 +0000

TOR will accept an unsolicited manuscript, and as they have published a few of my favorites i had been considering doing just that. What would be your advice on such an action?

By: Michael Capobianco

Michael Capobianco — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 17:44:12 +0000

I’m certainly interested in seeing more of your commentary on publishing contracts, Madeleine. I’d be particularly interested in hearing your opinion on whether the typical publishing contract covers what Amazon and Google are doing with their digitization programs, Search Inside the Book, especially.

Michael

By: Shawna R. B. Atteberry » A great site

Shawna R. B. Atteberry » A great site — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 18:34:11 +0000

[...] I discovered a great site that I wanted to share with other sci-fi/fantasy writers on my site: DeepGenre. DeepGenre is a collabarative blog where nine authors give help, advice, and insight into the general writing business and the specifics of the sci-fi and fantasy genre. This is the entry that introduced me to the site: Contracts 101: Grant of Rights by Madeline Robbins. I now have an idea of what a contract will look like and be about when I see one. Fantasy writers don’t miss Kate Elloit’s 11 Things in Fantasy/SF that I don’t Promise Not to Use (or Keep Using) in My Writing and Kevin Andrew Murphy’s 6 More Things I Could do Without in Fantastic Literature and I don’t plan to use Except to Make Fun of. They also have a discussion board for those of us writing our first novels. It is well worth time to check out and read. [...]

By: Carol Berg

Carol Berg — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 20:28:01 +0000

I’ll recommend Agent Kristin Nelson’s PubRants blog for an excellent reference on contracts. She just finished a series of posts called Agenting 101

http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2006/06/agenting-101-part-one.html.

Carol