Not sure where I should post this but I found this tongue-in-cheek piece from Kate Orman on the web. I imagine her advice would still apply to BBC Books as well.
The New and Missing Adventures: how to have your submission rejected
Words of Wisdom(?) from Kate Orman
http://nitro9.earth.uni.edu/doctor/korman.html
(korman@laurel.ocs.mq.edu.au)
This FAQ is intended for people who are considering sending a New or Missing Adventures submission in to Virgin Publishing - especially people who haven't submitted anything to a publisher before.
Now, Virgin have zillions of NAs and MAs sent to them every day by hopeful writers, many of whom have never put pen to paper before. The sheer volume of submission means that YOU WILL PROBABLY BE REJECTED. With so many new writers to pick and choose from, and so many established authors on thier books, Virgin can safely reject just about anything that comes their way.
There are many things that can cause your manuscript to be rejected. Many writers, especially newbies, insist on making one of the following blunders, no matter what advice they have received - from another writer, from Virgin, it doesn't seem to matter!
So here's a list of ways to make sure your New or Missing Adventure is rejected!
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GENERAL
Whatever you do, don't send a large envelope plus return postage (or IRCs) to Virgin to get the latest writers' guidelines. If you don't know what's happening with the series, you can be sure of a rejection slip. (Virgin's address is inside every New and Missing Adventure.)
Don't read any of the New or Missing Adventures. That way you can come up with terrific continuity errors, or better still, repeat an idea that's already been published!
If you succeed in getting a rejection slip, immediately write back and argue with the editor over why your book *should* have been accepted. That'll make you look as unprofessional as possible!
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CONTENT AND PRESENTATION
Include the Valeyard. (Stories involving the Valeyard are *automatically* rejected.)
Include the Daleks.
Include any other monster from the TV series. Showing a lack of originality, plus possibly creating an expensive copyright problem, is a great way to get that rejection slip! (There have been several NAs recently with old monsters - but all of them were written by well-established authors.)
Include so many spelling, grammatical or punctuation errors that Virgin would have to pay to have the manuscript edited and re-typed. (Remember, the manuscript you send in, if accepted, is marked up and sent directly to the printers for typesetting.)
Write it by hand, on both sides of the paper, with no margins - or otherwise ignore the instructions in the writers' guidelines. Make sure you don't include page numbers or put your name on any of the pages - that way your manuscript could actually be lost altogether!
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Those are just a few ways to guarantee a rejection slip. But even if you avoid all those pitfalls, it's still very likely that your manuscript will be rejected. (Lots of mine have been.)
Rejection slips are normal and healthy. I hear that Asimov was still getting them up until the time of his death. If you're a writer, a rejection slip may bruise you, anger you, and cast you in the pit of despair - but it won't stop you. Take a deep breath, come up with another idea, and try again.
Good luck!
That last comment is very true. No writer is so famous or popular that all their works are immediately published. Example: Stephen King, who you would expect to be able to publish his shopping list, was never to get his short story "Survivor Type" published. He finally included it in one of his short story collections.
Rejections are good. Asimov's first novel, "Grow Old with Me" was rejected after being commissioned. He sat on it for a few years, then rewrote it as "Pebble in the Sky", which became his first of many novels.
I heard a story once - I think it was Jules Verne - that he tried 15 different publishers for his first book and all rejected him. He threw the manuscript on the fire and his wife saved it before it burned and the 16th publisher finally accepted it.
And Rudyard Kipling once got a rejection letter which said "For goodness' sake man, learn some rules of English".
Hemingway is supposed to have thrown his first novel--the one before "The Sun Also Rises--into the ocean, because he believed an author first book was no good.
So who is Carlos Castenada?
He was an American scholar who spent most of the 60's and 70's studying with a Mexican shaman named Don Juan. DJ used peyote and other psychoactive drugs to reach higher states of consciousness. Castenada's work were very popular with Dr. Timothy Leary and other members of the 60's counter-culture. I think a lot of his work is discounted today, because he got a little too close to his work (i.e., he took a lot of peyote).
Well yes, this was largely indecipherable, hopping from one scene to the next, no transitions, no context, just "here we are in Cristien's apartment" to "now we're in Tenochitlan, but I'm not sure I can tell you why we came here or why I'm eating this psychedelic mushroom."
Why did the Brigadier, when Ace finally got hold of him, give her a pass to a secret UNIT facility? "Hi, I'm a friend of a future Doctor; you know, the alien you met day before yesterday, except he's different now, but he knows you and I need to get in to see him."
I missed the bit about the Meddling Monk (whom I don't know anyway). How did he sic Huitzilin on the Doctor?
Why did the Brigadier, when Ace finally got hold of him, give her a pass to a secret UNIT facility?
He probably felt such an imbecile after the 'Cromer' incident in The Three Doctors that he resolved to believe ANY old rubbish anyone told him, including people who turned up out of the blue claiming to be the Doctor and/or his lovely assistant.
Actually, in the circumstances it's amazing the Doctor doesn't get impersonated more often. Just Meglos in, er, Meglos and that Zane person in The One Doctor. (I'm not including androids here, obviously.)
When is this woman going to get tired of torturing the Doctor?
Aha! DWM in 2003 has the answer: 'I've been deliberately toning down the whole torture thing since Return of the Living Dad - it had become a running joke in fandom, and so was losing its effectiveness. Besides...I can't compete with Interference for realistic, degrading Doctor torture!'
Fair enough.
Bookwyrm:
'Orman had never taken drugs, and her first pitch to Virgin had been a very "right on" tale of the Doctor and Ace going around explaining why drugs were bad' - ha ha ha ha ha! So when and why did she decide to have the Doctor take magic mushrooms and LSD instead?
Virgin refused to pay $2.50 a line to use real ancient Aztec poetry, so Orman paid herself (The Who Adventures). Which is pretty mean of them but why would ancient Aztec poetry be copyrighted in the first place...