the absurd world of publishing

seeing how people occasionally ask me, "How's the book coming?" or "When's the book coming out?" i'm trying to pass along information to shed light on how excrutiatingly long and frustrating the road to publishing a book can be.

i submitted my picture book project to Chronicle Books at the end of August. publishers who accept unsolicited manuscripts (i.e. houses who don't require an agent) get deluged with thousands of manuscripts that somebody has to go through. i understand that. [when i read scripts as an intern for some film production companies in Los Angeles one summer back in '93, i was one of the people reading through those piles. as an intern i was the gatekeeper. if i didn't like it, my boss never saw it. that's a little scary to realize the power of the person going through the pile. but in all honesty, 90% of the stuff is terrible.] standard publishing ettiquette says to allow the publisher 2 months for a response. i did. after 2 months i wrote a query letter to inquire about the status of my manuscript. yesterday, i received the following hand-written note from Chronicle:

"Dear Brian -

Thank you for following up on your submission. Thank you for being patient! We are working as fast as we can to get through the enormous volume of submissions we receive.
I just wanted to send you a note to ask that you continue to be patient. You should here from us by March 2005.
We apologize for the delay and will try to what we can to get back to you as soon as possible.
Thank you for thinking of Chronicle Books.

(signed with someone's initials i can't read)"

Here's what frustrates me: Someone has taken 10 minutes to hand-write me a note and address the envelope but has told me nothing. And furthermore, since i can't read the initials and the letterhead is generic, i can't tell who (editor? assistant? intern?) wrote the note and whether they've actually even seen my project or are just replying to my query letter. if they had acknowledged they'd actually set aside my project for further inspection then i'd be optimistic. but instead of doing that they've just put off my wondering for another 4 months. by March 2005, i could be married and living in Sudan. i'm happy somebody wrote something. but it's a hand-written form letter and i feel as if i'm a passenger on a delayed airplane listening to the pilot make some breathy explanation for the delay over the loudspeaker.

now you can see why this stuff is so much fun.