Because I like to punish myself, I put aside this book review I’m working on to check out once again the Literary Rejections on Display blog and found this post about New Delta Review. Apparently, NDR uses this form letter:

For those with bad eyes, the rejection says:

Thank you for submitting. Unfortunately, the work you sent us is quite terrible. Please forgive the form rejection, but it would take too much of my time to tell you exactly how terrible it was. So again, sorry for the form letter.

Please let this be real. Please. I want this to be real so badly.

Already, someone in the comments section has advised NDR to hire a security guard, because someone might spray-paint their office and take a baseball bat to their car(s).

I have emailed the staff at NDR for confirmation of the form rejection.

*UPDATE*

Here are the emails I exchanged with the editor:

Hey Editors,

I just read somewhere online that you have a rejection form letter that says something like this:

“Thank you for submitting. Unfortunately, the work you sent us is quite terrible. Please forgive the form rejection, but it would take too much of my time to tell you exactly how terrible it was. So again, sorry for the form letter.”

Can you confirm this? I’d rather not waste my or your time submitting something to be rejected just to find out. But I really like the form letter, if this is true. It is funny.

Is it true?

Good work, everyone. Really. I don’t mean this sarcastically.

Thanks,
Ryan

And NDR‘s response:

Ryan,

I responded on the blog to the inquiry.  Yes, the rejection in real, in that it came off of our computer and follows the basic template of our form rejection (and was sent out by a particularly wise-ass editor on our staff), but it is not our usual rejection.  However, if I received that rejection, I would totally frame it.  People take this business way too seriously – rejections are handed out for a million reasons, the first 900,000 of them being personal taste.  But you know all this.  Glad it gave you a laugh!  Submit your work anyway!

-Benjamin S. Lowenkron

Editor-in-Chief