This Week in Rejection!: The Scream Factory

Posted on: 07/22/11

Nothing particularly special about this week, except that -- as you can see -- it's a handwritten rejection letter. Usually anything that smacks of the personal touch is a Good Thing in the world of rejections, but this one... It feels like a form letter, even though it's clearly not. There's really nothing personal about it and nothing to hang your hopes on.

Nice of him to take the time, though.

Scream Factory rejection

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The Scream Factory
By: Peter Enfantino on Mon October 10, 2011, 22:19:20
Wow!
That's me. Sorry for the quick note, Barry. By 1990 I was getting about 100-150 submissions a week and I couldn't do the personal rejects that I did in the "early days." I use to do line-by-line on some of the stories I rejected but I was spending hours a day and several times I had writers coming back to me less than pleased with being rejected in the first place. Thought it a good time to cut down on my correspondence about that time. But, you're right, it's not a form letter and it never would be.
-Peter Enfantino
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Re: This Week in Rejection!: The Scream Factory
By: Barry on Tue October 11, 2011, 08:28:29
Hi, Peter!

You know, I figured that someday, one of the actual editors who sent one of these letters would pop up here. And today is that day!

I hope you didn't take any umbrage at my comments; I admire your willingness to respond personally. And I hope that your comment here gives hopefuls some perspective on what they may be up against. 100-150 submissions per week! That's a huge number to go through, especially when the odds are most of them aren't up to snuff. Remember this, people, the next time you're annoyed by a rejection.

This is probably as good a time as any to remind folks that in almost every instance of "This Week in Rejection!", the rejection was quite richly deserved on my part. (And never fear -- I'll tell you in those few cases where I don't think it was deserved!)

Thanks for dropping in, Peter!

Barry

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