Rejected Submissions To 80s Computer Magazines

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[@rogrevs]

In 1985 I was a freelance contributor to several computers mags, mostly the business and home office end of the market rather than games. Many mags only had 3 or 4 editorial staff -- an editor, a staff writer, a sub-editor/production person and maybe an editorial secretary. Much of the content came from freelance contributors. I see that a couple of your replies came from staff writers and weeding out the wheat from the chaff (sorry Jason!) would have been part of their job. Sending out rejection letters would have been pretty low on their personal priority list and the quality of the rejection letters would have been down to the policy set by the editor and how much the staff could be bothered. The fact that the first letter had a pp signature suggests to me that Sinclair User had an editorial secretary and she/he handled the rejections once the staff writer/editor had given it the thumbs down. EMAP and VNU were the most professional publishers I dealt with (and they paid on time!), whilst some of the others were just cowboy outfits. Its great you kept your letters ---- I regret I kept nothing from those days.

[@DevelopIT]

It's good to get an insight to what occurred behind the scenes, thank you. I think at the time I was impressed that I even got a response.

[@user-yr1uq1qe6y]

I think I got lucky and had three submissions printed. Compute! Magazine and Run magazine if I recall. I chalk it up to the fact that I was targeting Commodore 128 which was probably rare in the submissions. The last one was around 1990-1991 which is surprising because that was pretty much the tail end of life for the c128.

[@DevelopIT]

That is really neat. I would have loved to have a magazine I could refer back to after all these years, to see some of my early programming. I should still have my early tapes, I would like to look back at.

[@user-yr1uq1qe6y]

@@DevelopIT I kick myself for not keeping copies of the mags, disks, or even the letters and contracts.

[@DevelopIT]

@@user-yr1uq1qe6y If you go to archive.org and search for "run magazine pdf", with the search metadata option. You can find the Run magazines in pdf form.

[@SusanAmberBruce]

What kind of programs were you writing back then?

[@DevelopIT]

I don't remember too much from all that time ago. I definitely remember games. I really need to dig out the tapes and remind myself. I do remember tying machine code on the ZX81 because the nmonics where in the back of the manual along side the character set. If I find the tapes I will do a video of them.

[@SusanAmberBruce]

@@DevelopIT yeah that would be cool 👍🏻