Dear Recycled Paper Greetings, I GET IT! – Mailbox

Normally I save my Mailbox entries for goofy emails I get, but today’s mail was goofier than normal, so here it is:

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Let’s see… The top left is copy of Reader’s Digest from my editor. I’m in the October 2006 issue (page 13)…

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…with this cartoon. Nice.

The bottom right are a few rejections from Harvard Business Review. Pretty standard, and I sold them recently.

But the big brown envelope underneath is a load of rejected material from Recycled Paper Greetings.

You might remember a particularly crappy rejection letter from RPG a while back. Well, since then I’ve gotten a few of these packs back from them. Today’s is pretty typical:

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Five packs I sent out between March 2, 2006, and April 4, 2006. Two opened, the other three unopened.

I’m fine with rejection, and I haven’t sent them anything since their “dear God, stop sending us stuff” letter. But, criminy, enough with the rubbing salt in the wound already!

I GET IT! RECYCLED PAPER GREETINGS DOESN’T WANT MY CARTOONS!

It’s pretty clear that not only did they not take the time to even look at most of what I sent them (even though they took seven months, and accept, hell, solicit submissions), but they clearly didn’t read the little postcard I include with everything I send out. (Ironically, it was paper-clipped to the top of today’s returned stack.)

“To save on postage, I no longer ask for my cartoons to be returned to me via SASE. Instead, please indicate your intentions by checking off an option below and returning this card to me. Please recycle any unwanted cartoons.”

No, you read that right…

Please recycle any unwanted cartoons.

You’d think Recycled would understand this. But no, they send back mostly unreviewed submissions Priority Mail. What a waste of postage, energy, and time.

It’s very clear RPG doesn’t want to do business with me. OK. I don’t need or want Recycled’s business.

I work with a number of greeting card companies, and I have one in the wings that I’m very excited about. (More later…)

But enough already with the packs.

I think next time I’m gonna refuse it and let them choke on it when it comes back.

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Color Comparisons

I recently sold a cartoon for greeting card usage that has been published previously in Reader’s Digest.

Of course the card will be in color, but the size I usually work in for the Digest is much smaller than the final greeting card, so I had to do the color again from scratch.

Just for fun, I made sure I didn’t look at the original Digest color (finished 11/14/04 according to the file info), just to see how different the greeting card version (finished today) might be.

Turns out I’m just not that creative when it comes to color (click to enlarge)…

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Digest on the left, card on the right.

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