can a publisher sit on my raw mss forever?

I had two independent novels edited - but not line edited - for around the 300 GBP mark each, but it was a while ago.
On the subject of lacking of proof reading, can I suggest having a look at @Triceratops blog in the blogs section and seeing what makes a good small publisher - end product is part of it. I'm with a small publisher and I've had an amazing editor in @Teresa Edgerton - and it doesn't get better than that - and a full copy edit by Sam Primeau (@TheDustyZebra). It's about the publisher and those trying to put out quality titles have good editing. It's certainly something to check out before contracts are exchanged.
 
mgilmour said:
Hence my question....do people really worry about the grammar compared to the storyline. BTW, this is not an excuse for bad grammar.
Click to expand...

If there is anything to notice in the grammar (and punctuation and spelling and word usage), then it's distracting the reader from the storyline. If the grammar and the other things are right, then they won't be noticed. They should be invisible, and that means they need to be correct.

Note that this does not mean every character must speak like an English teacher -- it means the narrative needs to be correct for who is telling the story, and the dialogue needs to be correct for the person who is speaking. And all the punctuation needs to be correct for clarity. If the reader is forced to stop and puzzle out what a sentence means, or who is speaking, your storyline suffers.
 
Anyway...if we want to continue the discussion on grammar, could we have a new thread please? I'd rather keep this one focused on Denise's original query, as it's an important issue, especially for her. :)
 
Update - I sent an email to Victoria Strauss of SFWA's Writer Beware and I'm hoping to hear back from her within a week or so. I've exchanged a couple of emails with her before. She has received serious complaints from other authors at this Pennsylvania small press, such as, not getting any royalty statements or payments.

The discussion of grammar and typo-free books is one way to assess a small, start-up press before getting in with them. It's the mistake I made, in jumping too quickly, and I am learning the hard way.

It's the same as applying for a job. You do your part in putting together a good resume and buying a nice suit for the interview. The company also has a responsibility to be the sort of place where you'd like to work. Say there are 2 bakeries in town. One displays wedding cakes with frosted flowers worthy of Louis XIV and the other displays lopsided cakes with lumps of frosting slapped on by a child. Perhaps both cakes taste sweet, but a clean attractive presentation makes the first cake a more enjoyable experience. The pretty cakes will sell better than sloppy cakes, and so you can predict that Bakery #1 will be a thriving stable business whereas the competitor will soon pack up shop. That's what we're selling with fiction -- not just a story but the pleasant experience of a story.
 
i'm glad you got your rights back, and especially since they did not publish it. IMO, Assent Publishing would not have gone ahead as that would have required effort and expense on their part. their main source of income is not readers, it is authors. they tried to fish in our Writers' Group for submissions early last year - any publisher that has to actively source submissions deserves keeping at arms' length.
 
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