I think these days works are submitted electronically so each exclusion requires a conscious choice.
Your think is wrong.
Publishers will take in an electronically-delivered MS ... if it's one they already issued a contract for. (My UK editors all gleefully brandished Sony Readers at me when I dropped in on them last month: saves them lugging briefcases full of dead tree betwixt home and office if they want reading matter on the commuter run.) And they require it, these days, when it's time to send it to the (external, third-party, outsourced) typesetting department.
But unsolicited submissions are an entirely different matter. If you let folks submit electronically, then half of them -- the half who don't read your submission guidelines or don't think they apply to *them* -- will spam the entire industry senseless with megabyte sized email attachments.
PS: This is not to say that word processors haven't made it easier to write longer books, and indeed TNH has opined that this factor alone caused the average slush submission to grow by 10% during the 1980s. But it's not a primary cause.
Re: Technology.
Your think is wrong.
Publishers will take in an electronically-delivered MS ... if it's one they already issued a contract for. (My UK editors all gleefully brandished Sony Readers at me when I dropped in on them last month: saves them lugging briefcases full of dead tree betwixt home and office if they want reading matter on the commuter run.) And they require it, these days, when it's time to send it to the (external, third-party, outsourced) typesetting department.
But unsolicited submissions are an entirely different matter. If you let folks submit electronically, then half of them -- the half who don't read your submission guidelines or don't think they apply to *them* -- will spam the entire industry senseless with megabyte sized email attachments.
PS: This is not to say that word processors haven't made it easier to write longer books, and indeed TNH has opined that this factor alone caused the average slush submission to grow by 10% during the 1980s. But it's not a primary cause.