Professionalism

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We’re all tightly packed together here on the internet.  Social media is a fuzzy category and now includes such platforms as LinkedIn, which I think of mainly as a place to hang your shingle while looking for a job.  I chose, many years ago, to make myself available online.  This sometimes leads to a strange familiarity.  It isn’t unusual for me to have an author hopeful to contact me through my personal email or through LinkedIn, especially, to try to push their project.  (Such people have not read this blog deeply.)  One thing acquisitions editors crave most highly is professionalism.  Being accosted on LinkedIn, or in your personal email, is not the way to win an editor’s favor.  Some of us have lives outside of work.  Some of us write books of our own and don’t blast them out to all of our contacts on LinkedIn.  Professionalism.

It’s tough, I know.  You want to promote your book.  (I certainly do.)  It seems strange to say that blogging is old-fashioned, but it is.  (Things change so fast around here.)  But you could start a blog.  Or better yet, a podcast.  Or a YouTube channel.  You can blast all you want through X, Bluesky, Facebook, Tumblr, or Instagram.  I admit to being old fashioned, but LinkedIn is for professional networking, not doing quotidian business.  It may surprise some denizens of this web world that some publishers don’t permit official business through social media.  Email (I know, the dark ages!) is still the medium preferred.  Work email, not personal accounts.  Some authors (believe it or not) still try to snail mail things in.  Publishing is odd in that many people, and I count my younger self among them, suppose you can just do it without learning how it works.  Most editors, I suspect, would be glad to say a word or two about professionalism.

Photo by Ben Rosett on Unsplash

Professionalism is what makes a commute to the office on a crowded NYC subway train possible.  We all know what’s permissible in this crowded situation.  We know to wait until someone checks in at work before asking them about a project we have in mind.  (If you’re friends with an editor that’s different, but you need to get to know us first.)  When I started this blog I was “making a living” as an adjunct professor.  I was hanging out my shingle.  I also started a LinkedIn account.  Then I started writing nonfiction books again.  Since those days I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to promote them.  Professionally done, if at all possible.

Bounce Back

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Bounce-backs are when an author receives a rejection letter and immediately emails the publisher back.  They are some of the worse ways to ensure future prospects with a publisher.  Now, I’m more sensitive than most editors, but I know of none, absolutely none, who feel good about writing rejection letters.  We’ve all received them and we know how bad it feels.  In publishing in general the appropriate response to a rejection is silence on the part of the author.  Since I submit more fiction for publication than non, it is mostly in that realm that I experience rejection.  (I’ve had my fair share in the nonfiction realm as well.)  I know, however, that if I want a future chance with a publisher you simply walk away from a rejection.

Photo by Mel Elías on Unsplash

Bounce-backs are a bad idea for a number of reasons.  First of all, they don’t change anything.  Unless a rejection is conditional (it rarely is), all a bounce-back does is make an editor who probably already feels bad about it feel even worse.  Misery may love company, but it’s unprofessional to spread it around.  Secondly, bounce-backs hurt your future prospects.  Nobody wants to establish a professional relationship with someone who can’t take rejection.  A third reason is you’re asking someone who’s already considered your project and who’s moved on, to take more time with a book (or article, or story) to which they’ve already said “no thank you.”  A fourth reason is that a bounce-back announces loudly and clearly, “I didn’t take time to think about this; I’m reacting emotionally.”

One of the best things an aspiring writer can do—and this includes academics—is to learn about the publishing industry.  There are tons of resources out there.   The best information I personally have found on success in academic publishing is reading about how to submit fiction for publication.  I have a very long list of rejections to hold up against the twenty-something stories I’ve had published.  None of those rejections felt good.  Obviously, I thought my material was good, otherwise I wouldn’t have sent it in.  I try not to take it personally, but slowly learning those lessons has led to more frequent success.  You need to practice submission to get better at it.  I’m somewhat of an expert on aporripsophobia, so I can say with confidence that even a nice, polite, “thank you” in response to rejection is not favored.  Simply let it go.  That’s the professional thing to do.