A-Z Blog Challenge: T

Oh, by the way...Thanks for the rejection.

T is for Thank you.

At the beginning of the year, I received a rejection letter.  I read it, and then read it through again.  I was confused.  Not that I got a rejection, like all authors, I’ve had my share.  But, I honestly didn’t remember submitting to this publisher.  Especially since Cornerstone Deep was published in November.  So, I looked back into my records and sure enough, I had sent them my manuscript for consideration…in January of last year. 

Since I didn’t remember submitting to them in the first place, I did a little research and checked them out again.  Once I saw their guidelines, I did vaguely remember it all.  Like many out there, they stated that they’d get back to me in about 4-6 weeks.  No doubt, after I didn’t hear from them, I headed off and subbed somewhere else…like to the publisher who accepted it and drove all the other submissions out of my mind. 

Anyway, regardless to say, I got a good chuckle from the whole thing.  Truly, these people were dedicated to notifying every submission they received with a 'yes' or 'no' answer.  And I couldn’t resist emailing them back with a 'thank you'.

Not long ago, I sat in on a class about querying etiquette and one thing that stuck in my mind was that it was good practice to reply to every submission response, whether good or bad, with a note of thanks.  I had always done this after being considered for a job, but hadn’t thought about it as an author.  The teacher of the class, being an acquisitions editor, said that the names of those who responded with a ‘thank you’ stood out when they resubmitted or submitted another work.  She couldn’t help but give them a little more consideration. 

Do you reply when you receive a, “not at this time?”  How about some memorable responses to your submissions?

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