Still Unclear on the Concept

First I got this:

Dan McNay

mcnay@usc.edu 

19 October 2010

Dear Dan

Thank you for sending us your manuscript, The Truth About Treasure Island. Our process is to send all manuscripts to professional readers for a thorough assessment. As we receive a large number of submissions, this assessment process takes anywhere between two and four months. We will be in touch as soon as possible.

We appreciate your patience.

Yours sincerely

Caitlyn Ellwood

Production Assistant

Random House New Zealand

Phone: 09 444 7197

Fax: 09 441 2714

www.randomhouse.co.nz

Then I got this:

Dan McNay

mcnay@usc.edu

21 October 2010

Dear Dan

On 19 October, you may have received the following email from Caitlyn Ellwood, a new staff member at Random House New Zealand.

‘Thank you for sending us your manuscript, The Truth About Treasure Island. Our process is to send all manuscripts to professional readers for a thorough assessment. As we receive a large number of submissions, this assessment process takes anywhere between two and four months. We will be in touch as soon as possible.

Unfortunately this email was sent in error and should therefore be ignored. My sincere apologies for any confusion its receipt may have caused.

Yours sincerely

Nicola Legat

Publishing Director

So I wrote them:

From: Dan Mc Nay [mailto:mcnay@usc.edu]
Sent: Friday, 22 October 2010 4:49 AM
To: Lipshaw, Stuart
Subject: Re: Apology

Dear Folks,

Now I'm confused. You send me an email from Stuart Lipshaw and its signed
Nicola Legat. And tell me a previous email I received was in error. What does
that mean? You did not get my submission? You are not reviewing it? You are
not sending it anywhere for evaluation? You don't want to tell me anything?

I'd appreciate some clarification.

Thanks

Dan McNay

Then I got this: 

Dear Dan,

I'll do my best here to answer your questions one-by-one.

The apology message was written by Nicola, who is our publishing director,
however as I have been managing the manuscript submissions until last week,
it is my inbox which is linked to all the submissions, thus the email was
sent from my account.

The message you received earlier in the week from Caitlyn was an
administration error whereby acknowledgement emails were sent out to people
whose manuscripts have already been received a long time prior. This was
human error which has created confusion and we apologise for that.

We did receive your submission in May, and as I recall, I contacted you to
suggest you try other publishers as your manuscript did not fit our list
because of the lack of New Zealand content. That advice still stands and I do
wish you the best of luck with publication.

Apologies once again for the confusion,

Sincerely,
Stuart Lipshaw

I had posted his response to me in May. They didn't want to look at the book because it was set in Samoa and I had a return address outside of New Zealand. I was turned down by two other New Zealand idiots for the same reason. Take a look at Random House New Zealand's web site http://www.randomhouse.co.nz/Fiction_11.aspx and tell me who the New Zealand authors are and which books are set in New Zealand. 


Same ole same ole