One Reason Editors Say No

Tim O'Reilly, whose blog and Twitter feed are always worth following, pointed in a tweet today to an interesting post by Bryce Roberts, a venture capitalist who's partnered with O'Reilly in Alphatech Ventures. His post is called "My Least Favorite No." I had never thought much about the parallels between venture capital and publishing, but both editors and VCs do similar things: make bets, whether it's on books or companies, based on an evaluation of what they're creating, a sense of the market and where it's going, and a gut feeling about the people behind the product--be they authors or entrepreneurs. Bryce writes: 

I hate saying no. But, its the most common answer I have to give when an entrepreneur asks me if I’d like to invest in their business. 

For "entrepreneur," insert "author," and it's true for me as well. He continues: 

The product could have an audience. Even worse, I may really like the team. But there’s a problem: I just don’t care.

Yes, a market may be big, but I just don’t care about it. Yes, a product may be getting popular but I would never use it. Yes a team may be well suited to win a category, but I don’t want to work with them. These are my least favorite no’s because there’s no feedback I can give them that changes anything. 

I was in this situation just recently. I received a proposal from a good agent, by a well-qualified experienced author who had written a well-organized outline about a worthy topic. But it was simply not a topic that I'm excited about, so I passed. My rule of thumb is, if I wouldn't go into a bookstore, as a consumer, and buy this book, I shouldn't be the editor. I'm not going to have the right feel for how to connect this book with its audience, because I'm not part of that audience. 

It can be easy to talk yourself into taking on a project when the subject seems hot, or you have an author with great media connections or a successful track record. But when you lack that gut feeling for why someone will want to read the book, you're asking for trouble. As Bryce puts it: 

As someone who is only going to make a handful of investments a year, I prefer to back every check with cash AND conviction.

I make more than a handful of investments each year--call it a couple of handfuls. But I feel the same way: if you don't have that conviction, it's probably not a good bet. It's hard enough to get a new book off the ground when you are passionate about it. When you're not, it's almost impossible.

The Kindest Word in the English Language

I've often heard my father say, "sometimes the kindest word in the English language is No." He has been both an editor and a writer, and I think his views on this point come from the latter perspective. When you have sent a manuscript or a pitch to a publisher, what you want to hear, of course, is Yes. But failing that, a quick No is a lot more helpful, and merciful, than a long, agonizing silence.

When I was a junior editor, I wanted to impress agents with my keen editorial brain, so I would sometimes take an hour or more to craft a rejection letter that showed my incisive understanding of the flaws of the manuscript I was sending back. It wasn't that easy to find an hour or two with everything else I had to do, so sometimes it would take me a few weeks actually to compose my brilliant decline. Now that I have been at the game longer, I've realized that a brief, even brusque "no thanks" sent in a day or two is generally more welcome to an agent or author than an extended critique that arrives weeks later. I still sometimes hold onto submissions longer than I should, either because I'm genuinely on the fence or because I've got the bad old feeling that I need to explain why I'm saying no. But I try to err on the side of promptness rather than well-meaning delay.

If editors need to say no more promptly, writers need to learn to say no, period. Nothing is worse for a writer's productivity than, well, all the things he or she does beside writing. Going to conferences, reading other people's galleys to blurb them, doing a book review--these are all worthwhile activities, and if you do enough of them, your own book will never get written.  Another memory of my days as a junior editor: I was publishing a novel I was crazy about and I knew a famous literary novelist would be a perfect reader for it. I composed a fervent, personal blurb request and sent it to her with a bound proof. I soon received a letter back from her that read something like this (I'm quoting from memory):

Dear Mr. Ginna,

Here is a partial list of things I am responsible for at this moment: one dog, three cats, a parakeet, two book reviews, three magazine articles, and one novel. Much as I would like to read what you have sent me I cannot possibly take it on at this time.

Yours very truly,

(the famous novelist)

Needless to say I was disappointed and a little miffed; I was even more miffed a couple of months later when I found a colleague of mine had received the same letter, with her name typed in where mine had been. The famous novelist was cranking out form letters in reply to our heartfelt entreaties!

By the time I got to be a grizzled senior editor, I felt differently about these form letters. I had realized that most people who got my begging letters didn't bother to write back at all, so the prompt form letter was comparatively courteous. And having worked with many more authors, I had seen how many of them got nibbled to death by well-intentioned requests and projects, and were months or years late on their commitments, because they were too nice to say No. It is not a coincidence that the famous novelist has written more than two dozen books in the two decades since our exchange.

The problem is not confined to the literary world. I recently came across the printed postcard that Francis Crick, who became a world celebrity for his role in deciphering the structure of DNA, used to fend off the stream of requests that came his way.

Sometimes saying No is a kindness to yourself, too.