Today I finally sent the letter withdrawing my manuscript from the publisher it’s been sitting at.
It’s a disappointment, because the initial signs were promising. The manuscript made it past the junior editor/first reader — this puts it in the top 5% right there.
Trouble is, that was three years ago.
(Clearly it’s the Rice Syndrome — I’m in the bottom 20% of the top 5%. At least for this publisher.)
I didn’t mind the wait for the first year, or even the second. I know this publisher is slow anyway, given anecdotes from two people who weren’t coming in via the slushpile. And I expected NYC publishers to have massive delays following 9/11.
But the junior editor isn’t there anymore, and there’s been no response to my email query last October or my snail mail query of this February. Time to move on; I’m sending the manuscript to another publisher next week.