PatronQuo.com announces the inauguration of the new Talent Feeders Program – our initiative in reaching out to literary agencies, publishers, writing contest judges, and literary journals for entertaining, high quality short story submissions that they have passed on for any number of reasons.
Sometimes, the best short stories are rejected for reasons that have very little to do with their objective quality or potential commercial appeal. Often, it might come down to an editor’s particular tastes, the thematic focus of a literary journal, or the wrong fit with the publishing imprint that received the writer’s submission. Quite often, a rejection might simply stem from space limitations or unfortunate timing.
Our goal, with the new Talent Feeders Program, is to ensure that these great stories are not simply lost in the proverbial slush pile, put out to pasture with the mass of rejected stories that didn’t compare in quality.
With the roll-out of our Talent Feeders Program, we’re sending out notification to all literary agents, publishers, contest judges, and literary journals that they now have a place to refer the also-rans, the stories that came close, that made an impression on them, but just weren’t accepted for any number of reasons beyond the quality and overall merit of the submission.
We’re sending out the message that we’ll provide a home for these short story submissions – that we’ll post them on our website and let the public decide whether such submissions are indeeed worthy of patronage.
In turn, those literary agents, publishers, judges, and literary journals should be credited for their judgment and taste in referring such stories to PatronQuo.com.
In that sense, they need not fret over rejecting a short story that was later vindicated by the public. Instead, we propose to make use of the valuable time they’ve already spent in judging the submission, offering them credit on referring a story that may still have a chance to resonate with the public on PatronQuo.com. In consideration for their referral, we’ll credit them – at the foot of the story – as the Talent Feeder for that tale, providing (should they choose) a link to the web page of their choice.
It’s our way of salvaging quality literary material from the slush pile while making productive use of the time already spent by these professionals in rendering their judgments.
Sometimes, the winner need not take all. On PatronQuo.com, all true literary talent should be given a chance to flourish and make their case – a case made with the crucial help of the Talent Feeders.