Dear Geist,

I've been sending out stories to publishers for years but usually don't even get a brush-off. Just silence. Either I'm a terrible writer or my stuff is somehow missing the current trends in what is demanded by editors. I don't select my topics, they select me, so I cannot fall in line with any pre-set notion of what the content should be. Is my case hopeless, or, not? Be honest. I can take the truth because I'm a fool. (Didn't Nietzsche say we have art so we don't die of truth?)

Dear Bill,

works hard to define what we want by setting out our tastes, our mandate, our range and our history; but these can only be described, not quantified. The same goes for the excitement we feel when we see something that works for us.

As for publishers’ silence, that’s not personal either. No one in the business feels good about the endless wait times for responses to manuscripts, a product of shrinking resources for publishers combined with better access to writing and submitting by many more writers. If publishers had an objective, consistent yes-or-no formula for what we want, we’d tell writers first.

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