How long is too long to wait for a trad publisher to get back to you?

[Malik]

Well. Hold on to and not buy is a no from me.

Yup. There's a team working on a screenplay, now. If a publisher wants it, the price just went up. A lot.

 

[Prince of Spires]

Way back when I first got into this game on my own steam and not working under my mother, there was only you, the publisher, and a box of paper and SASE's (Self Addressed Stamped Envelopes, for the kids). Not only was waiting a year or more normal, the slush pile was literally a pile, some publishers still had transoms over their doors, and submitting the first three chapters and an outline was the standard. When we got rejected, we got actual slips of paper. We lived for the personalized rejections.

Some (many) publishers still live like that's the way to publish. Though many at least moved to electronic submissions, last year I found a big Dutch publisher who still requires paper submissions... Some of them are dinosaurs, and my feeling is that some of them will end up like dinosaurs because of it...

 

[Dylan]

A publisher who can't bother to communicate with you should be on your permanent ignore list. I'm not expecting personalized rejection letters, but to my mind if the company in question hasn't even written a standardized rejection letter, they are either too arrogant or too amateurish to want to go into business with. Sorting out emails and replying to them with a letter one can copy and paste is common courtesy. Alike Karlin I've seen the "if you don't hear from us in X amount of days we aren't interested" and promptly thought: "Which self-respecting person would be interested in your company in the first place?"

Totally agree, publishers who ghost or can’t bother with a simple rejection email don’t deserve your time. A standardized “no thanks” takes seconds and shows basic professionalism. If they can’t manage that, they’re not worth the stress. Move on to better opportunities.