Here's A Genre I Didn't Think Of!

STATUS: From the blog silence, you can imagine how hectic this trip as been. Meetings all day. Catching up on emails in the evening, and you have to fit a little bit of fun in there too!

What’s playing on the XM or iPod right now? CALL ME MAYBE by Carly Rae Jepsen

I've been in New York for the past 3 weeks doing meetings with a lot of different editors at all the different houses. I started off with the editors who acquire young adult and middle grade.

Of course I ask, "What have you been seeing lately?"

Imagine my surprise when no less than three editors (all from different houses) responded with, "crap."

At first, I wasn't quite certain how to reply. That wasn't exactly the answer I was expecting! I opted for, "would you care to define 'crap.'

And they did. They mentioned recently that they've seen a whole slew of submissions that weren't really ready for an editor to see. By the way, these were submissions from agents.

I asked why they thought that was so. I got three main reasons:

1) They were seeing hot genre stuff, such as dystopian, that they felt like the agents were not vetting as thoroughly as they should.

In other words, in any hot genre, the market gets crowded yet those submitting hope that because the genre is hot, it will sell.

2) There were some agents submitting young adult projects that don't traditionally rep it and to be blunt, it's different than repping fiction in the adult realm.

3) A lot of submissions could have benefited from a solid edit and revision before submitting. In other words, they were not in strong shape even if the concept or idea was solid.

Some agents don't edit before submitting. Some do.

So interesting. I'm definitely looking to avoid submitting crap.

*grin*

I think I can do that!