Writing blogs have been all over the announcement last week by Tin House of a change in their submission guidelines. Calling it Buy a Book, Save a Bookstore, beginning August 1, 2010, Tin House has one added requirement for all unsolicited manuscripts. Every submission must be accompanied by a receipt from a brick and mortar bookstore.
Writers commenting on the GalleyCat article dated July 2, 2010, have called the announcement elitist, classist, shameful, etcetera. At first glance, I too, felt affronted by the new requirement. Who are they to tell us where to buy our books? However, after thinking about it for a couple of days, I can see what they’re trying to accomplish. Not that I’m supporting it, mind you, but I think I understand their goals.
About the requirement for a receipt:
- Tin House does not state the receipt must be for one of their books or magazines. Apparently the receipt may be for any book purchase.
- Neither do they state a deadline or void date for the receipt. Heck, I keep bookstore receipts to use as bookmarks all the time. I’m sure I can find a few around my house.
- They do have an option for those who can’t afford to buy a book or who can’t get to a bookstore for some reason. The option is time intensive, being a haiku or sentence explaining why the author can’t fulfill the requirement.
- They explicitly state the receipt may not be for an e-book, but they don’t justify why they are so against digital reading material. Perhaps they don’t believe in saving a few trees.
The new requirement seems to be a cumbersome and bothersome way to support independent bookstores. They’re forcing writers to make a decision about how important physical bookstores are to them. All it’s really doing is creating ill-will amongst writers, especially those who can’t afford to buy books, because all their extra money goes to ink and paper in support of literary magazines that don’t accept electronic submissions. How about a receipt for that, Tin House?
On their submission guidelines page, they do give writers the option to submit electronically via their online submission manager they named (with a bit of wordplay) Tina. However, it doesn’t state how to submit the bookstore receipt if you take advantage of Tina. (You know what I mean.)
My theory on this bold new move is that Tin House is looking for innovative ways to cull their slush pile while at the same time appearing to be advocates of brick and mortar indie bookstores. However, they’ve also created a deterrent for writers to buy books or magazines online through the Tin House Shop. They’ve managed to alienate many writers who will choose to submit to magazines that are less concerned with their authors’ reading habits and more concerned with their story writing.
One of the first things I look at when submitting is whether or not the publisher accepts electronic submissions. If not, they go to the bottom of my list. Likewise, if they have a list of extra requirements for submissions beyond the usual standards, to the bottom of the list they go.
Tin House may have met their goals, but in the process, they may have lost some talented writers.
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