Joe Clark is listing everyone he contacts in book publishing, and whether they get back to him.

Joe Clark is listing everyone he contacts in book publishing, and whether they get back to him.

nickdouglas:

Now this is a daring idea. I only sold one book to the first editor I talked to (she was the best possible editor my book could have had), so I really can’t tell if Joe’s project is brilliant or foolhardy. I do hope it gets attention.

I was REALLY excited to read this but when I clicked over I didn’t really understand it. I mean, i GOT it, and I enjoyed it, but I didn’t know the major cast of characters. But perhaps you do and this will be a dishy read! Rock on Joe Clark!

Joe Clark is not the first person to do this. A guy named Gerard Jones did it a few years back when he was shopping a book that got rejected by several publishers. The upshot is that he ended up with a halfway decent directory of nearly every publishing executive in the industry.

You can read the unpublished book here.

It seems like Joe is just sending people unsolicited pitches—in which case, they’re not obligated to get back to him, so I’m not sure what his beef is. Most publishing houses don’t accept un-agented manuscripts at all—and most large agencies don’t accept unsolicited stuff either—so sending anything over the transom and expecting a response is a hail mary in the first place. I can’t tell if Clark doesn’t know this, or he just thinks he’s an exception.

Writes Joe:

When an experienced writer pre-pitches an editor on a project, the editor has an obligation to respond and respond nicely.

If they asked Joe to pitch them, yes. If they didn’t, they owe Joe nothing.

Joe having a book to pitch doesn’t make him someone’s client or author. No agent or editor owes him anything, anymore than I owe the 50 or so publicists who send me unsolicited inbox-clogging pitches a day a response just because I may someday contact them about a story (which, to date, has never happened. I can find stories on my own.)

I think most people are fairly generous with their time and try to get back to unsolicited pitches in between juggling existing clients or authors and working on projects in the pipeline, but the sense of entitlement here is what rubs me the wrong way. It’s the attitude that because simply because I sent you something, you owe me your time in evaluating it, regardless of whether you asked for it.

The title of the post, “publisher accountability,” implies that a publisher owes Clark something. The only publisher who’d owe Clark anything is a publisher who bought Clark’s book and contractually agreed to publish it. As far as I can tell, that hasn’t happened.

No publisher owes Clark anymore than Martin Scorsese owes me for my unsold totally awesome screenplay about mobsters with hearts of gold that takes place in the Bronx circa 1957. Or maybe I should do a post titled “Hollywood accountability”? **

** Choire punctuation.

Source nickdouglas