Is this a good time of the year to send proposals?

You know that I am often asked a question that I feel it would be good to answer to others as well. One of my clients just asked such a question. Is this time of the year a good time to send a proposal?

The answer is yes and no. 

The publishing industry pretty much goes dead between Thanksgiving and after the first of the year, at least for the larger houses. However, a lot of editors use that time to catch up on their reading. But they have a lot of trouble moving on something because they can't get the necessary meetings together to make acquisitions because of holiday scheduling. So they are reading but probably not buying? That's how it tends to work.

That means they are probably only responding to the ones they are going to pass on. It's a time for cleaning off their desk and narrowing it down to the ones they want to try and move on when everybody gets back to work. It's a good time to get something read, but we don't want them responding because a response would probably be negative.

That's what I mean by yes and no.