People write, because people have many things to tell and to those who amazed the world, and when people just written they send those things to see if they are published. It is a natural behavior of the human being, almost a physiological need, the correct order of the world (editorial). Those who publish them, the publishers, and those who try to publish them, literary agencies, receive tens, hundreds, thousands of manuscripts of writers of all kinds, rank and condition that expect to be blessed with the approval of those who hold the criteria. Be anointed by the warm printing mechanisms. They sprout like flowers, they arise as fungi. They are the manuscripts not requested. Many calls, few chosen.
“We receive handwritten all the time, either by the web, by mail or physically, enclosed folios. Some even design the cover, as well as to save us work. Or send their self -edited book, as if that increased the possibilities of being selected,” says María Fasce, literary director of Alfaguara, Lumen and Reserve Books. There is usually the belief that sending a manuscript to an editorial is equivalent to throwing it in the trash, but, good news, it turns out that editorials take them into account.
Fasce ensures that in its stamps everything is responded. Of course, the possibilities are remote. More than throwing it in the trash, sending an unre requested manuscript is like throwing a message to the sea in a bottle. It can reach port, but only pushed by very favorable currents. And that in Spain they are published, among all kinds of free artifacts, about 90,000 titles per year. Some unpublished authors try to attract attention in the midst of all this jaleo: they send large decorated boxes or t -shirts merchandising. Everything is going to get the head.
The writer Miguel Alcázar has just published the book Not requested manuscripts (Jot Down Books). It collects precisely those texts that publishers reject and that form a kind of parallel literature, the literature that could be and was not. Thus very diverse texts are found: an involuntary plagiarism of Invisible cities From Italo Calvino, or a novel written with Chatgpt, or a starring rings, hammers and washers or another based on the adventures of the inhabitants of the number 13 of the Pecage wheel created by Ibáñez. In another, Federico García Lorca is saved from death, goes to clandestinity and from there leads the anti -Franco struggle.
The truth is that they are brilliant ideas, but you have to take into account a small detail: Alcázar has invented these texts, in a literary exercise of Borges or Perec. And there are those who, in social networks, have fallen into the trap and have exploded in cholera against the author for spreading these materials, a practice that they consider humiliating. Nor is it uncommon: Alcázar plays confusion, as he also did with the literary criticism invented from his previous book, Literary criticism in the 90s (The broken nail). “They are a tribute to the dreamers, to the passionate people, those who have screwed their life for literature,” says the author. We must not lose hope, although an editorial rejection can play a lot of self -esteem and noses: James Joyce, George Orwell or Marcel Proust were also rejected.
Despite the invention, Alcázar knows that world well because he was an external reader for editorials. They are the people who read the manuscripts and give them (or not) their approval for their consideration by the editorial. The first screen. And Alcázar is proud to have given way to some books by authors such as Sergio del Molino or Patricio Pron. “It’s about making a serious report, with a commercial assessment, another literary … They paid about 80 euros per book. But so you can see that there is some arbitrariness, sometimes I passed the manuscripts to my partner to, under my name, to be able to cover more material,” he says. “The manuscripts that arrive are usually boring, or normal, or mediocre … but that is not very different from most of what is published,” he says.
All books have something good, even if they are bad
Interestingly, editorial readers are exposed to various literary materials of doubtful quality that may not be the healthiest to form taste. “I have never read worse than when I was an editorial reader,” says Alcázar, “those who decide what is published carry with them that baggage of bad literature. But, well, it is even beneficial. As Cervantes said, there is no book that does not have something good, no matter how bad it is.”
Literary agencies, those that mediate between authors and editorials, also receive manuscripts. “It’s crazy, we receive about 25 on average every week,” says Palmira Márquez, director of Dos Passos. The genre that appears most is the thriller. Although on their website they communicate that they no longer accept, there are writers who present corporeally at the agency to request an appointment. In their case, it does not give them life (work) to respond to all. Of course, they pay special attention to those who arrive from editors who do not see them in their seal (but it may be in others) or recommended by the writers represented by the agency (who arrive almost to the hundred).
The publication criteria are not strictly literary. Books containing an intrahistory, which can generate news or dedicate themselves to current issues will have more possibilities of being published. In addition, many times publishers do not look for a text, but an author: someone with relevance, with followers, with a unique personality. With a profile. The editorial industry is an industry, not a museum.
Is it written more and more? “We are more, there is tremendous incontinence. Many people think they have a sufficiently interesting life to be told, but in the end our lives are all quite bland. Fortunately, many books are bought today in Spain,” says Márquez.
In Anagrama, they receive between 600 and 1500 wild texts annually. “A couple of years ago we decided to pause the reception of manuscripts not requested because it was very difficult for us to maintain a reasonable response period. We are working on a web form that allows us to reactivate and digitize the reception system,” says editor Ana Rodado. The manuscripts received are recorded and reviewed before moving to the Reading Committee, preparing a report. If the resulting report is positive, it is read by a house editor.
Unexpected signings
“There is the misunderstanding that the editors do not look at anything, and that we have a new Ulises On the table and we do not realize, ”says Fasce. However, as he points out, today it is easier than ever detecting talent: it can be traced on social networks, in the press, by the mouth to ear, by the multiple ways in which an author can reach the editorial today. The first discard can also be easy for those who decide: sometimes it is enough to see how the writer presents himself in his mail or in his letter of the first pages.
María Fasce says that, in 32 years of profession, she has not found too much publicable material in the avalanche of manuscripts that arrive at her table. In other cases they appear: the agency Dos Passos signed authors such as Alba Carballal or Daniel Remón. For four editions he devised a way to channel those manuscripts through the Dos Passos award to the first novel, which published Galaxia Gutenberg and won, for example, Daniel Jiménez with Cocaine.
Authors such as Alejandro Zambra, Juan Pablo Villalobos or Esther García Llovet entered in Anagram. “I was sending my novel Submachine For six years to different publishers and many do that Spanish thing that it is not telling you that no, they don’t tell you anything, and then I expected and waited, ”says García Llovet.“ I also save rejection letters that are elegant and very explicit, as if to put them in a frame, ”he adds. As he got fed up with this world, of the constant attempts to publish giving his head against a wall, he wrote a book with a very appropriate title: How to stop writing. He made a last attempt.
On December 28, the day of the Innocents, he received a call: “Mrs. García Llovet, do you want to talk to Mr. Jorge Herralde (then Anagram editor)?” The writer thought she was an innocent. But it wasn’t. Since then, he has published five novels in Anagrama, with very good reception, which have built the strange universe of what llovetiano. “Publishing is very complicated, especially if you don’t know anyone from the publishers. Although there are now more editorials than when I started, editorials indiesvery good. And I’m glad. ”A happy ending.