Fast Fiction

Sometime late in 2003 I sent my rather successful collection of one act plays, The Parking Lot Plays, to “my publisher” for consideration.

Today, approximately three years later I got a reply:

On behalf of Doug, Jonathan, and myself, thank you again for submitting your work to Playscripts, Inc., and for your patience during our evaluation process.  We’ve completed our review of “The Parking Lot Plays,” and have concluded that the Playscripts catalogue would not be the best fit for this particular work. This decision is not a judgment on the quality of your work; rather, we regretfully find ourselves limited to a finite number of great new plays that we can most effectively publish and promote.

Even though we cannot publish your play, we genuinely appreciated the opportunity to consider your work, and thank you for sending it our way!

I want to reiterate how much we appreciate your patience during this admittedly lengthy review period.  We started Playscripts, Inc. just a few years ago, with the belief that a publisher should keep its doors open to a wide range of submissions.  The resulting influx of scripts led to much longer review periods than we or any playwright would have liked, but we remain committed to keeping the door open.

At first I was irritated that it was taking so long, especially since those writers who were already published by them were given “priority”, but then I thought it was pretty funny.

I admit that I am disappointed, mostly because I believe that they are ideal for the college market, which was what I was led to believe Playscripts was angling themselves for: modest staging requirements, flexible casting and interesting parts.

I kept hoping that they would pick them up so I didn’t post them on my new website as I had with The Redeemer. Now that I no longer have to worry about pulling them, I’m seriously considering self-publishing (via LuLu.com or something) or just some sort of Creative Commons license that allows folks to read them and distribute them all they want and they only have to pay a royalty if they produce them.

I’ve been so out of it in the theatre world for the past few years I have no idea of folks are already doing it. But it’s a goal for the New Year.