Does anyone know whether Honorable Mentions are worth spit to agents or editors? I now have an Honorable Mention from Writers of the Future (see the pretty certificate?) and an Honorable Mention in the 16th Annual Year's Best Fantasy and Horror anthology edited by Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling. So far as I can tell, these are consolation prizes awarded to anyone who actually got a story accepted by a recognized mag or subbed to a contest. True? Not true? Anyone know?
Don't get me wrong. Even an honorable mention is better than a kick in the head, but I would like to know if it actually means something. This, to me, is a bit like having a novel advance from the slush pile. Now that it has been proven better than the run-of-the-mill slush and survived outright rejection, it has progressed to that grand state called Limbo. This means an editor can now sit on it forever without ever answering a query as to its status. Tor did this to me for 2 years before claiming they had lost the manuscript (which they had requested!!) and inviting me to start over. Now the lovely and harried editor-in-chief at Baen has stopped answering my queries after 2 years of the same MS being in her review pile. I get it that everyone is busy. I don't get why the "better" manuscripts end up getting treated worse, actually, than the outright rejects, which are at least free to try their luck somewhere else.
Score with this MS so far: sent to 2 publishers, both advanced it past the slush. Working on 6 years, no definitive yes or no. AAAAGH!
About Holly
1 month ago
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From my reading of the agent blogs, I'd say that these sound similar to awards - only relevant if they're important. Kind of the "SFWA Grand Master award" good, "local knitting group says I'm nice" bad dichotomy. So, if they denote that some authority has sat down and evaluated your MS then, yes, include them. But if as you say they're just "published stories that we rejected" then I'd say not.
ReplyDeleteThat's just my 2p, of course!
(BTW, are you subbing to agents as well as editors?)
(PPS - I'm hoping to be back on OWWW in a couple of weeks. Once my employer decides whether to keep that status or not...)
(Aarghh - Blogger is evil. I had to go through two different browsers and quite a bit of fiddling just to get a comment posted!)
ReplyDeleteThat's pretty much my take: nice that someone noticed, not the same as a sale. I hesitate to even mention them in my cover letters, but on the other hand, what it can hurt? It does show that *somebody* thought the story wasn't a dog, even if it didn't rise to the top of that particular market or contest. Hundreds of thousands of entries vs an honorable mention. So, okay, maybe it means a *little*!
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