For those of you who are not trying to make a living writing, let me explain the process to you.
First, you write the article that has been floating around in your head. It may be that the perpetual state of road construction in the central Mexican town in which you’ve expatriated has finally caused you to flip out, so you write an article. Or, perhaps you’ve written a book.
Second, to sell this article or book, you have to write what is known as a query letter. This is a sales pitch to an editor telling her why she should buy your article.
“I need to eat, so please buy this screed!”
Then, if she wants to look at it, she lets you know, so you send the article, or in the case of a book, the book proposal.
Where this gets dicey for someone living in Mexico is that it costs big to send a letter to the States. The cost for a 25- to 50-page book proposal is astronomical. I spent $25.00 USD to send one book proposal.
There is no use crying over this since this is the way it is done. It is the way it has always been done and probably is the way it will always be done.
Sending a query letter or book proposal to a prospective editor or publisher is very formal. You have to check the submission guidelines of each outfit to see what their requirements are. Though there should be, there is no uniform way of doing this. Each editor will have his own anal-retentive, contrived way of wanting you to send him your stuff. I find this the height of insanity, but who am I to judge?
This gets very, very ,very tricky if you are a writer in a foreign country. Supposedly, there are supposed to be things called International Reply Coupons, which are essentially postage vouchers. The purpose of these little cuties is that editors and publishers, bless their anal little hearts, want you to enclose a Self-Addressed, Stamped-Envelope. They want this so badly that they will threaten you with simply pitching your materials into the trash bin should you so stupidly forget to included this item.
This is not as bad a thing as one might want to imagine. I mean, these editors and publishers get thousands of submissions and would go bankrupt paying to reply to each one. I get that and, when I was in the States, never flinched in including the SASE with my editorial submissions.
What editors and publishers do not get at all is that in Mexico, where life itself functions along a different Quantum Dimensional existence, no one has ever heard of an International Reply Coupon! In Mexico, and I have come to suspect specifically in Central Mexico where I live, this is more true than anywhere else in the country (or world).
Here is an example: My wife loves to buy canned salmon at the local supermarket. It is the only place we know of where we can get it. That store has been carrying it for a couple of years. Well, one day they were out of stock. They were out of stock for so long that my wife finally asked, in the fluent Spanish at her command, when and if they would get some more in stock. She was told,
“Oh, Señora, we don’t carry canned salmon, and what’s more, we never have.”
You simply would not believe how common an occurrence this is in this part of Mexico. We hear this all the time. And, there is nothing you can do to convince the person with whom you are talking otherwise.
I talked to about a dozen postal employees who all told me that not only did they not have International Reply Coupons, but what’s more, they never have had such a thing. One lady went so far as to say nowhere in Mexico would you find such a thing.
I accept this now without so much of a twinge of wanting to scream like a banshee and run through the streets of Guanajuato pulling out my hair. What I cannot begin to possibly accept is that editors and publishers are so clueless about Mexico as to assume that Mexican postal employees would have heard of such things as International Reply Coupons.
What does make me want to scream like a banshee and pull out my hair is that in the day and age of the Internet, these recalcitrant editors and publishers for the most part—and I mean the vast majority—will not allow any writer, no matter where one lives, to send in work using anything other than snail mail.
I know of one publisher who said the reason publishers wouldn’t even let you send work by international courier, like DHL, is that they might try to deliver it when the publisher is not there, making it necessary for him to take the “attempted delivery” notice somewhere to pick it up
THEY DID NOT WANT TO GET IN THEIR SUV’S AND HAVE TO DRIVE TO PICK UP AN ATTEMPTED DELIVERY!
Not only do they demand you send your work by snail mail, but you somehow, someway, through a miraculous act of God, have to attach return postage on it or it gets trashed! So, no international courier and especially not as an e-mail attachment. God forbid!
Let’s say I was fortunate enough to send a manuscript by snail mail and could include an envelope with the proper return postage. The chances of it reaching the publisher from Mexico very closely approximates ZERO!
I have lost money like you would not believe sending requested manuscripts to publishers on speculation. This is a term which means, “we might buy it, or we might not”. They want you to spend a fortune sending them something from Mexico based on their whim.
Do you begin to see how writing for a living is very much a publisher-heavy proposition? Though, if it weren’t for writers, the publishers would not have a job. Yet they make demands on writers, especially those who live and work in a foreign country, that are all but impossible to keep!
How do you send something with sufficient return postage when the postal employees have never heard of International Reply Coupons?
Though logic demands using the Internet, those who sit on the throne of the publishing world simply do not get it.
Who ever said logic counts in the publishing world?
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Douglas Bower - EzineArticles Expert Author
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: (Summer 2006)
Guanajuato, México (April 22, 2006) New Book offers survival tips in the Land of Frogs
Guanajuato, México – According to the 2000 Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, published by the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Service, an estimated 300,000 Americans would expatriate to other countries each year between 2000 and 2005. Some estimates predict the number will continue to increase each year after 2005. Americans are leaving the country in droves, most of whom settle in Mexico. The authors of The Plain Truth about Living in Mexico have written a new book targeting a specific area of Mexico where Americans are moving as expatriates, study abroad students, or retirees. This new book is titled,
"GUANAJUATO, MÉXICO: Your Expat, Study Abroad, and Vacation Survival Manual in the Land of Frogs."
Contact Information: Doug and Cindi Bower
http://www.zyworld.com/theolog/PlainTruth/Home.htmArticle Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Douglas_Bower
