the cost of having been everywhere

By way of follow-up to this post: I’ve been able to publish so widely because I am always attentive to the character of the publishing house or periodical I hope to write for. What kinds of books and authors do they publish? What is their core audience? Whom do they hope to reach? I make sure that my pitches and/or drafts are well-tailored to the character of the venue, and don’t push too hard against its boundaries and conventions. I’ve made a point of this because I’ve learned that, while there’s no statement that’s true of all editors, it’s fair to say that most of them are pretty cautious: they have a sense, often hard-earned, of what their audience will accept, and are disinclined to publish anything that will rock the boat too strongly. But I sometimes feel that, if most would-be writers are inattentive to these matters, I may be overly aware of them. One unfortunate result of my attentiveness is something I’ve mentioned before: though I have published nearly 20 books now, not…