This just in: My rejection letter from Lonely Planet

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Today I am proud to say I have officially earned a personalized rejection letter from Lonely Planet. I’ve been sending applications and writing samples to small-time independent blogs, etc but I thought I’d aim one at the top just for the fun of it. I figured I could give the poor subeditor with the dreary job of wading through the slush pile of unsolicited manuscripts a little laugh if nothing else, so I sent my application in the form of a rejection letter. Excerpt:


Dear Sir or Madam:

In the unlikely event that your publication’s slush pile should be in need of further augmentation, I am submitting the below referenced material for you to justifiably ignore. For your convenience, I include here a useful and reusable preemptive rejection letter that you might simply cut and paste into the body of a standard form. I will thank you not to waste your time considering the content of the so-called work, nor to needlessly expend any patience with same.

~~~~~~Cut Here~~~~~
Dear Sir:

I would like to thank you for your interest in Lonely Planet…I would like to, that is, but don’t feel I can do so in good conscience; rather I am obliged, in the interest of honesty and out of concern for the practice of journalism as a whole, to take this opportunity to attempt to dissuade you from any further communication with members of the community of respectable writers.

Neither engaging nor informative, this “material” you mention lacks merit on any number of grounds, only some of which I can explain at this time as the litany of flaws is so compendious it would require more time to outline than I can afford. The style, if there is one, is that of a self-indulgent cracker barrel humorist intent on amusing himself at the expense of his audience, if there is one. The author, which I can only assume is you, combines a lack of relevant experience with no demonstrable skill and expends his efforts on pointless musings inappropriate for our publication or any other publication of which I am aware. This is not to say that the “work” is without use entirely, we often have need of bad examples to use in cautionary tales for our younger (but actually capable) editorial staff.

I do wish to thank you for your thoughtfulness in writing my rejection letter for me. I can honestly say I couldn’t have said it better myself. I further appreciate the fact that you have spared me the tedious task of pretending to glance at your CV, which could not possibly have contained anything of interest whatsoever., and that you ignored our submission guidelines entirely, thus rendering your drivel much easier for me to discard. You may be a semiliterate, second-rate hack, but at least you are a considerate one.
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In response, the subeditor in question did in fact cut and paste the rejection letter and followed it up with:

…Seriously though, thanks very much for the entertaining email. So nice to read something a little different to ‘I was born to be a writer’ ‘travel is my passion’ etc etc.
You probably would have received an auto response to this email, so I guess you are aware that for the next six months we’re not recruiting authors, but if you are interested in being an author for LP please return to http://www.lonelyplanet.com/jobs/work-at-lonely-planet-authors in early 2010 for the latest details. If you have what we’re looking for, please submit an application.

To be honest, I was hoping for a little more, perhaps some points that I might include in future preemptive rejections, but hey. I hope to obtain similar missives from equally prestigious publications for posting here.

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Comments

[Flip]

hahahaha
thats pretty clever and it would have been hilarious if they actually turned a 180 and said, " quintessentially, we are really impressed with what you have and would like to see in bringing you aboard" that would probly be the best reverse psychology attempt in getting a job ive ever seen if you had pulled that off. where are you at these days?