Because of these several impediments, as well as other technical difficulties, you will find typos and occasional replication of text. In our humble opinion, typos show that the logs are of *live* chats, not canned interviews, and minimal editing of these logs has taken place.

[Cybling] Folks...let's welcome Betsy Mitchell to chat!
[Cybling] Good to see you today Betsy! How's the convention been for you so far?
[Betsy_Mitchell] Exhausting! Of course!
[JulieCz] Hi Betsy! Thought I'd drop in!
[Betsy_Mitchell] Last night I co-emceed the Chesley Awards,
[Betsy_Mitchell] which was absolutely a lot of fun, except for the fact
[Betsy_Mitchell] that because we were in a vast auditorium room,
[Betsy_Mitchell] the union guy could not turn off the lights because not only the
[Betsy_Mitchell] Chesleys but the entire dealer's room would have been
[Betsy_Mitchell] plunged into utter darkness. So we had to show all
[Betsy_Mitchell] the finalists' slides with lights on. Not your ultimate
[Betsy_Mitchell] awards ceremony. But a good time was had by all.
[Cybling] Ow! That put a crimp in things though.
[Cybling] Now I'm assuming that when you come here as an editor it's a totally different experience than when you come here as a fan?
[Betsy_Mitchell] Indeed. But as a matter of fact,
[Betsy_Mitchell] I've only attended two cons in my life as a fan. I never knew
[Betsy_Mitchell] they existed until I stumbled upon one--here in
[Betsy_Mitchell] Chicago, I suddenly realize! when I was in college,
[Betsy_Mitchell] and that was a STar Trek con.
[Betsy_Mitchell] After that it was a couple of years before I became an
[Betsy_Mitchell] editor, but I wasn't going to cons then.
[Betsy_Mitchell] My first real con was the 1980 Boston Worldcon.
[Cybling] Wild. You schooled here in Chicago? Which school?
[Betsy_Mitchell] No, just visited here in Chicago. I went to college in Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska,
[Betsy_Mitchell] so visiting Chicago was a Big Deal for us.
[Cybling] Okay..sorry for my misread there.
[Cybling] If you have questions for our guest, please just ask. But please, let the guest answer one question before you ask another.
[Cybling] Betsy...I heard that Warner Aspect was running a first novel contest.
[Cybling] Can you tell me a little about that?
[Betsy_Mitchell] Yes! We opened it for submissions early this year--I think that's right, I can't even
[Betsy_Mitchell] remember now, because all of a sudden we were flooded with submissions,
[Betsy_Mitchell] every day the mailroom guy would bring us a big box of entries and
[Betsy_Mitchell] after a few months of this the mailroom guy started getting ugly about it...
[Betsy_Mitchell] (just kidding!) but seriously, we had so many that he had to start
[Betsy_Mitchell] bringing them in those strong post office plastic delivery boxes, and the floor of my
[Betsy_Mitchell] office was swamped. June 15 was the last day for first-round submissions to
[Betsy_Mitchell] come in, so we're not taking any more. We got almost 1000 all told. But only about
[Betsy_Mitchell] 25 went on to the second round, and we're reading them right now. So if any
[Betsy_Mitchell] of you folks made it to the second round, you can feel very proud of yourselves.
[Betsy_Mitchell] The final winner will be chosen by Tim Powers and announced before the end of this year.
[Cybling] Now I take it that this is an unusual happening. You don't usually accept unsolicited manuscripts?
[Betsy_Mitchell] That's right. It's because Aspect has such a small staff--just me and my assistant, Jaime Levine,
[Betsy_Mitchell] who has just been named Associate Editor. If we took unagented submissions
[Betsy_Mitchell] all the time, the folks sending them in would have to wait a year to hear back
[Betsy_Mitchell] from us, and we'd have to sit around staring at big piles of unread manuscripts
[Betsy_Mitchell] all the time, and I have enough guilt as things are. So, I think
[Betsy_Mitchell] it's just fairer for everybody not to take them except under special occasions.
[Betsy_Mitchell] The last time we ran the contest, the winner was Nalo Hopkinson, with BROWN GIRL IN THE RING, and
[Betsy_Mitchell] she was well worth finding, so we're hoping lightning strikes twice with this new contest.
[Cybling] So. Let's say one of us is thinking of submitting a finished manuscript. Should we send a letter first? Get an agent?
[JulieCz] Wonderful author - and her new book is just as good!
[Betsy_Mitchell] Julie--thanks for the kind words on Nalo. And Cybling, I hear often
[Betsy_Mitchell] from authors that finding an agent is even harder than finding an eventual publisher!
[Betsy_Mitchell] I'm sorry that's true (and I've just finished a manuscript of my own and now I know what it feels
[Betsy_Mitchell] like to be on the writer's side of the fence). But anyway, to submit to Aspect, either find an agent, or
[Betsy_Mitchell] another way is to have an established author who has some kind of relationship with me already--
[Betsy_Mitchell] one of our published authors, or someone I used to work with at Bantam or Baen,
[Betsy_Mitchell] have them read your manuscript and if they like it, send it to me with a little note from them recommending
[Betsy_Mitchell] that I read it. I do appreciate professional feedback of any kind.
[Cybling] Okay...so the old maxim that selling short stories to the magazines first and then writing the novel holds pretty true then?
[Betsy_Mitchell] Yes it does. It helps writers build an audience before they get to the full-length form. I worked
[Betsy_Mitchell] at Analog my first professional job in SF publishing, and when I became an editor at
[Betsy_Mitchell] Baen I bought a couple of people's novels because I knew them from Analog--Tim Zahn was one, Lewis Shiner
[Betsy_Mitchell] was someone who'd written for Asimov's, and there were others too.
[Cybling] And going to conventions and meeting other authors is a good idea as well.
[Betsy_Mitchell] Yes. You might think that meeting editors is also a good idea, but my advice would be not to
[Betsy_Mitchell] try to pitch your book when you meet an editor at a con. Just introduce yourself,
[Betsy_Mitchell] say you're working on something and looking for an agent (or whatever), and be pleasant.
[Cybling] Good advice.
[Betsy_Mitchell] No hard sells. We tend to sidle backwards, wide-eyed, like frightened horses, when potential
[Betsy_Mitchell] authors ccome up and try to sell us their books in person. But I do like to meet people
[Betsy_Mitchell] just to talk, so no problem there. You can also ask questions about what we're looking for.
[JulieCz] Authors are very helpful to one another, I've noticed. Good advice.
[Betsy_Mitchell] As an example, right now I have a need for a military science fiction writer.
[Cybling] Betsy, you discovered J.V. Jones, Nalo Hopkinson, David Feintuch, Roger MacBride Allen, Elizabeth Moon, and Sarah Zettel.
[Cybling] What's it like when one of your discoveries is nominated for an award?
[Betsy_Mitchell] Ah, it makes all the hard work that goes into publishing a book worthwhile! And especially when they win! I'm
[Betsy_Mitchell] very proud of all the authors you named. And Octavia Butler--who of course
[Betsy_Mitchell] I didn't discover--won the Nebula Award this year,
[Betsy_Mitchell] and since we have published her for years, I feel a certain proprietary sense about
[Betsy_Mitchell] all of her books. Anyway, having an award nomination or win is great for everybody.
[Cybling] folks...I've been monopolizing this chat, and Betsy has to leave soon to do some other things at the con.
[JulieCz] Nalo won the Campbell for best new author last year -- that must have been a thrill as well.
[Betsy_Mitchell] Yes, I've got a 9-year-old here dragging at my arm to go up to children's programming. Julie--yes,
[Betsy_Mitchell] Nalo is really taking off in a big way. And she's such a delightful person, she's bound to
[Betsy_Mitchell] go far. Any of you--if you hear Nalo is going to be at a con, definitely try to meet her. She
[Betsy_Mitchell] is charming.
[Cybling] folks...if it's alright with you, let's let Betsy get away and take care of getting her son to the programming...
[Cybling] and perhaps get her to come out here in the near future to chat with us at more length.
[JulieCz] Bye, Betsy - have a great time with your son!
[Cybling] Are there any last questions?
[Cybling] Going once?
[Cybling] Okay folks....let's thank Betsy for coming to join us in chat today!
* Cybling applauds
[JulieCz] Yeah!!!!
[Betsy_Mitchell] Thank you--it was nice to be here. Bye!