Letter from Nhorad
Dear Todd
Hi, it’s me again. I have a few more questions for you, ok? I have many friends, and I love to read and write dragon books (I am currently writing a dragon book.) But, getting back to my questions, about submitting a book to a publisher. How does that work? I am curious, do you have to pay when you submit your book? How much would it be? Is there a step-by-step process? Please explain. (I’m in need of explanations.) Thanks.
Sincerly
Nhorad
Hi Nhorad!
Good to hear from you. You may notice that I’ve heavily edited your letter to me. If you’ve read Harry Potter, you’ll recall Hagrid telling Harry, “Not every wizard is good.” Anyone can read what’s posted up on my website (for that matter any snoop can read most e-mail sent to anyone) so please treat the internet as if you were sky-writing or shouting out the top of your lungs in the middle of a busy bookstore — you’re the best person to protect your privacy.
To answer your questions — nowadays most publishers don’t accept “unsolicited manuscripts.” It’s a pity but they’re already reading until their eyeballs fall out with all the solicited manuscripts they get. But obviously new writers, like Christopher Paolini who wrote “Eragon”, get published.
The first step is to learn the basic rules — double-space your print, print only on one side, use a monospace font (like Courier, not Times), use underline for italics, don’t get cute with fonts (like making letters big and then small — that’s the publisher’s choice, writers only get to suggest such things), make sure that your spelling is good (be sure to check for homonyms — too many people get mixed up between “their”, “they’re”, and “there” for example).
The next step is to check out who’s publishing what. The best guide for that is a big book called “The Writer’s Market.” It also includes useful articles on writing. “The Writer’s Market” will list which publishers take which sorts of books.
When you’ve selected a publisher, you send them a query letter. The query letter briefly introduces yourself, tells a little bit about the book, and offers to send an outline and the first three chapters if they’re interested. Most of the time, they’ll send you a polite “no.” This you’ll have to get used to — you’ll get far more rejections than acceptances when you’re starting out as a writer. Don’t take it personally and don’t think that that means the publisher might not be willing to look at a different work of yours at a later date — they might have filled their quota of books for the year, they might have a backlog, or you might just have proposed a boko which they’ve got three of already on their publishing calendar.
If they’re interested, they’ll send you a different letter. It may well say something along the lines of “please send us your outline and first three chapters.” If it does, do so.
I’ve mentioned outlines twice. You’ll want a good outline. You’ll even want it for yourself when you’re writing. It’s a roadmap, usually in the present tense of what is going to happen in the book. Note, not a list of characters or places but more what’s going to happen. You want to write it as though you were talking to the publisher directly — make it exciting and don’t get bogged down in details. The outline will show the publisher whether you know how to plot your story and it will give him/her a chance to see if you’re story is something he/she might buy. Your three chapters will show that you can go from outline to story and that you can write — you have good dialog, good description, you understand pacing, and you don’t get bogged down.
If the publisher reads your outline and three chapters and likes them, they may ask if you’ve got an agent. You may not. Literary agents specialize in knowing the literary market. Most first-time authors don’t have agents. Usually a first sale is such that the publisher will dictate most of the terms anyway (they’ll be paying you for the privilege of publishing your book).
Publishers aren’t in business to rip-off authors — they’re in business to make money. The difference is that unscrupulous publishers soon find themselves without good authors writing good books — and they go out of business shortly thereafter. Where an agent helps most is in knowing not only the current state of the publishing industry but in understanding where it’s heading — and in being the “bad cop” to your humble “good cop.”
My recommendation, however, is that you consider writing short stories. Because they’re short, you can learn a lot about the craft of writing quicker — after all, you can probably write 5 good 5,000-word short stories much more quickly than one 90,000-word novel! Ray Bradbury said something along the lines of having to write 5,000 bad stories before he learned how to write his first good one — and I think there’s a lot to it. No one is born a perfect writer.
I hope that helped!
— Todd