How to Get Published

by Al Kalar

Every publisher has standards for inquiries. If you ignore those standards, you have a very good chance of being rejected before your manuscript is even read.

The reason behind this is two-fold.

1. The publisher has set up a system in-house that depends upon the author’s cooperation. Some receive hundreds of submissions a day and don’t have time to wipe the drool off the chin of some prima-donna author who thinks the publishing world is drooling at the mouth while eagerly awaiting their particular “next best seller”. They need to have the elements requested, ONLY those elements, and in a format that is easy for them to handle.Those elements may include: submission by an agent (cuts down on the size of the pile), double spaced (allows room for handwritten notes), on paper (no electronic submissions), a cover letter, a synopsis, a particular portion of the entire ms (may be just a couple of chapters or the entire manuscripts), 12-point type (to save wear and tear on the eyes of the employee who has to read the submission), and so on.
2. The publisher only wants to work with people who can follow directions. If you can’t do the most important thing (your submission) correctly, then how sloppy will your book and your work habits be?

So, find the publisher’s web site (or research the information in A CURRENT VERSION of one of the publications that explain this sort of thing) and read their submission standards carefully. Then follow them exactly.

If you can find the name of the CURRENT editor who handles submissions for your particular genre (like Romance), you can send your submission directly to the proper person (unless the instructions tell you differently).

How do we do it at AKW Books? Well, you can read our Inquiry submission instructions on our website.

In a nutshell, here are the major steps (but DO read the entire set of instructions):

1. Read our contract first. Why waste your time and ours if you don’t like the deal?
2. Send us a note with a SHORT explanation of what you have to submit. This has to be short because the email form we use smashes everything together into one long paragraph. A good example would be:

I have a finished romance of around 83,000 words set in 14^th century England that I would like to submit for publication as an eBook.

That’s really all you need at this point. If we’re interested in period romance novels (we are), we’ll send you specific instructions to send us a sample, of a particular length, in a particular format, and to a particular email address.

After that, we’ll send specific instructions for each step through publication if your work is up to our high standards.

Tags: cover letter, format, inquiry, publisher, sample, submission, submitting to a publisher, synopsis

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 15th, 2010 at 2:00 am and is filed under AKW Business, marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.