The Next Big Thing

A Brief Guide To The Publishing Industry
and The Submission Process For Aspiring Novelists

Introduction

So you think you’re a writer? You’ve penned the final words of the seminal novel that is going to propel you to literary stardom. And after months, years, decades of hard work you are emotionally and intellectually drained, inordinately happy and sad at the same time. But at least now you can inhale a deep well-earned breath of satisfaction and kick back while you wait for the publishing deals to start rolling in. You’re the next Camus. You’re the next Dostoyevsky. You’re the next Tolstoy. You’re the next Hemmingway. You’re the next big thing.
If you’re expecting this article to provide a sure-fire shortcut to becoming a published author then stop reading now to avoid disappointment. If you’re still reading then take another deep breath because here’s the bottom line, the simple truth: Writing a novel is the easiest part of being a writer. Getting published now that’s a whole different deal. It’s where the work begins. It’s where you’ll ride a whirlwind of frustration, rejection, apathy, depression, anger, disillusionment, tears, ambivalence, and if you’re lucky you might just get hit by the occasional atom of hope on the way round. Assuming you’re ready to face all of the above then this article aims to provide an informative guide to the industry that you are attempting to enter. You’re the next Kafka, remember?

Where To Begin?

If you’re serious about getting your work published then you need to start thinking of writing as a career. It takes the fun out of it a bit I know, mais c’est la vie. And like all careers you need to begin by knowing the industry. You need to know it inside out, the upsides, the downsides, the players, the pretenders, the rules, the traditions, every nook, niche and cranny out there. Ultimately the more you know the less time, effort and money you’ll waste sending your work to all the wrong people in all the wrong places at all the wrong times.
Research, research, research, then research the research. Read everything about the industry that you can lay your hands on (hopefully you’ll finish this article first). There’s a wealth of publications out there at your disposal. Some of them are quite good and some are very bad. Read them all, take what you can from them, but remember none of them are an absolute truth of absolutely anything. Below are a few publications that I have found interesting or informative to some degree.

Inside Book Publishing : Giles Clark: Routledge: ISBN 0-415-23006-3 (pbk)
ISBN 0-415-23005-5 (hbk)
Marketing Your Book (An Author’s Guide):
Alison Baverstock: A&C Black ISBN 0-7136-5965-3
From Pitch To Publication: Carol Blake: Macmillan ISBN 0-333-71435-0
The Internet: A Writer’s Guide: Jane Dorner: A&C Black ISBN0-7136-6126-7

In addition to these there are enough online articles and websites to keep you reading for all eternity. Once again some of these are professional and informative whilst some of them are nothing more than electronic trash. See our links page for a gentle steer in the right direction.
As a writer the one publication you absolutely cannot do without is The Writers Handbook (2004) edited by Barry Turner published by Macmillan (ISBN 0-333-908-120). This contains comprehensive listings for virtually everyone involved in the industry from publishing houses to book clubs. It is revised and amended annually. These days there are several similar publications but The Writers Handbook has been the definitive industry text for over thirty years and every agent and editor out there has at least one dog-eared copy at their desk.

The Publishing House

Ok so you’re all researched out and just itching to get your work out there. So where do you send it? Sadly gone are the days of eccentric publishing editors puffing on cigars, gargling brandy and actively seeking talented young writers to nurture in their spare time. Increasingly these days the accountants are running the show. It’s all wince-inducing number crunching, projected sales figures set against printing, marketing and distribution costs. The labour and costs involved in launching a new author mean that any returns from the sales of a first novel are substantially reduced. Factor-in the inherent risk that the novel may not sell anywhere near as well as the projected sales figures and you’ll begin to see why publishing editors are taking on fewer and fewer new authors. More and more of them are sticking to authors who are already published, authors who have a proven track record and people with a public persona or degree of celebrity status (note the glut of mediocre novels published by minor celebrities trying their hand at writing over the last decade). For these authors the target audience is already well established, therefore sales figures are easier to predict with a degree of certainty and less investment is required in the marketing of the novel. It means less work. It means less risk. It means higher returns and more profits to make all the shareholders smile.
So what does this mean for you, the next Bukowski at the start of your writing career? It means that if you submit your novel directly to a publishing house, chances are it will sit in one of the legendary ‘slush piles’. These are the backlog of unsolicited manuscripts and submissions that every editor and agent has in their office, and generally consist of several stacks of paper approximating four feet tall. Editors don’t have the time to read all these, and your submission will be returned in six to eight weeks without having been read at all. The average publishing house takes on between zero and two new writers each year and editors spend the majority of their time working with the authors who are already on their client list. So in the little time they do have to read new material they need to be sure that what they’re going to invest their time in reading is writing of a publishable standard that possesses saleable potential: They need someone to sort the chaff from the wheat for them. All hail the middleman. Entry stage left for the agent.

The Literary Agent

In this current commercial climate almost all publishing houses will refuse to read anything that was not submitted to them by a literary agent. Today there are hundreds of literary agencies out there. Just like editors in publishing houses they are inundated with unsolicited submissions and manuscripts. Just like publishing houses primarily they’re there to make money. And just like editors they have a tendency to concentrate on the authors already on their client list and published authors with a proven track record. So what’s the difference? The only real difference is that agents will try their best to read and seriously consider all the submissions they receive, unsolicited or not. And if you get an agent behind you then you’re over halfway to getting a publishing deal. However don’t get too optimistic; here are a few facts to bring you down:
The average literary agency receives hundreds of unsolicited manuscripts and submissions every month. The average literary agency takes on between two and four new writers each year. However there might be a brief glimmer of hope here for some of you because over 95% of all the unsolicited submissions received by agencies are so excruciatingly badly written that they border on being incomprehensible. So assuming that you’re in the 5% that can write to a publishable standard then perhaps the odds aren’t stacked as badly as you first thought. Smile you might still be the next Jane Austin after all.

Submission

Before you send anything to an agent (or publishing house editor should you decide to travel that route) you first have to figure out which agent (or editor) to try. If you’ve written an erotic thriller and submit it to an agency or agent that specialises in travel guides you’re wasting everybody’s time. It sounds obvious, but you’d be amazed at the amount of writers who saturate the system by endlessly submitting their work blindly to all and sundry. Trawl the entries in the Writers Handbook and list the agencies that are suited to your material. The entries are fairly comprehensive so take note. Some agencies will have specifically entered that they have a full client list and are taking on no new authors at present or that they are only accepting submissions by recommendation. If you send your work to any of these it will come back fairly quickly and won’t have been read.
You will notice that a few agencies ask for a reading fee, the amount of which can vary quite substantially. I would not recommend paying any agency to read your work (unless the agency is offering a reading service which is a whole different thing to charging merely to read your submission. Whether they are inundated with submissions or not it’s a simple fact that without talented new writers the agents would soon run out of products to pedal and be out of business. Therefore no matter how one-sided things may first appear they do in reality need us more than we need them and so charging a reading fee is generally regarded as out of order and unprofessional. If you worked in an office would you consider paying your employer for the privilege of being there? And besides, if an agency is that mercenary in their attitude would you really want them to represent you and your work to the publishing houses.
Most agencies have more than one agent and the larger ones have whole teams. Each agent tends to specialise in a specific area or genre. If it’s not readily apparent which agent to approach from their entry in the Writers Handbook then by all means make a brief phone call to the agency in question to find out. If your work does not fall neatly into one genre then the agency receptionist should be able to advise you on the appropriate agent if you are able to describe the work clearly. The majority of them are fairly helpful, but even if they aren’t be polite and patient all the same because in a busy agency there is a high possibility that the receptionist or secretary could be the one reading your submission if the agent in question is run off their feet.

What To Send

Once you’ve identified the right agents to approach do not simply send them your entire manuscript. It will cost you a fortune and will come right back to you unread, or will go straight in the agent’s bin (supply the appropriate return postage and packing to avoid this). Some agencies will specify in the Writers Handbook exactly what they expect from an unsolicited submission. If they do then make sure you stick to it. Send them what they ask for and nothing more. If you attempt to push more of your work on them than they are willing, or have the time to read then once again it’s coming back unread. Play the percentages: Give them what they want no matter how painful it may be. You’re not the next Voltaire quite yet.
The exact format of an acceptable submission does vary from agency to agency, however below are some guidelines for a submission that is generally accepted (and therefore read) by the majority of agencies.

1. A brief letter of introduction.
2. A stamped and self-addressed postcard. (optional)
3. A synopsis of the novel.
4. Biographies of the main characters (optional).
5. An author profile.
6. The first three chapters of the novel.
7. Return postage and packing.

1. A brief letter of introduction.
This should contain a short introduction and a brief description of your work. For this you need to be thinking along the lines of the ‘blurb’ on the back of a published novel. Keep it short but make it punchy. This is where you captivate the reader’s attention. You need to make the reader want to read your novel before they’ve seen a word of it. But don’t go overboard. Don’t make outlandish claims. Don’t claim that you’re the next Cervantes. Don’t state that all your friends and family have read it and proclaimed it to be amazing: their opinion is of no interest to the agent. Don’t claim that your work is similar but far superior to that of some world famous author. Don’t claim that it is going to be snapped up by a major film mogul and adapted into a Hollywood blockbuster. Maybe, just maybe one or all of these are true, but even so it’s not wise to astound the agent with your arrogance before they’ve looked at your work. By all means if your work is similar to that of any published authors mention this as it may help the agent to gain a more concrete impression of your novel, but by no means start slagging off other authors, they’re the ones who are published after all. The letter must also include the length of your completed manuscript by stating how many words it consists of to the nearest thousand. Keep the letter as brief as possible. Ideally it should be around a page in length and definitely no more than two.

2. A stamped and self-addressed postcard (optional).
The majority of agencies will not acknowledge receipt of your submission and you will hear nothing from them until it is returned to you with a letter of rejection or a letter of interest asking to read the complete manuscript. However do not send anything by registered post (or any other form of mail that requires a signature on delivery). If the post is delivered when the agency is closed or there is no one there willing to sign for it then it will sit in the post office depot for four weeks before being returned to you as undelivered. Understandably the agency will not waste their time and resources sending someone to pick up and sign for all the unsolicited manuscripts sent to them by registered post. If you are the type of person who will worry about whether or not your submission has been received then the best idea is to include a self addressed and stamped blank postcard. Write the agency’s name on the back and something along the lines of ‘we acknowledge receipt of your material’. This way the agency receptionist simply has to put it in with the rest of the post at the end of the day and your peace of mind is assured. If you’re not a worrywart then it’s probably not worth the cost of a stamp so just kick loose and wait.

3. A Synopsis Of The Novel.
This needs to be a concise summary of your entire novel. It should detail the plot (if you have one), the development of the main characters and the progression of any ideas and themes that run through the work. With this synopsis you need to aim to give the reader a vivid account of where the novel is heading and where it all ends up. Do not hide or obscure the ending in the hope that the agent will demand you send the complete manuscript so they can see what happens, they won’t. The agent may very well love your first three chapters, but unless they like the ideas and realisation behind the work as a whole then they probably aren’t going to risk taking the time to request and read the entire manuscript. Many writers make submissions before the work is actually anywhere near finished. Agents hate this, so don’t do it. Do not send out a submission for half a novel. Even if the agent loves the submission it’s highly unlikely that they will retain any level of enthusiasm for it after the six, eight or twelve months it takes you to finish it.
There is no set length for a synopsis. If your novel is very long and has highly complex characters and plot twists then the synopsis will need to be longer to get it all across clearly. Generally it should be as short as possible, but contain sufficient detail to give the reader a vivid account of the novel. There’s a balance to be had. Make it too long and it’ll be tedious, too short and it’s instantly forgettable. As a rough guide it should run somewhere between one and five printed pages in length. If you scribbled notes of plot points and character traits before or during the writing of your novel then these will go a long way to helping you write a synopsis because in a fragmented way that is essentially what they are.

4. Character Profiles (optional).
Sometimes these are a good idea if you are struggling with the synopsis. They can give the reader an advance understanding of the characters you are writing about and as such leaves the synopsis free to concentrate on plot and progression. Aim to write two to three short but informative paragraphs on your main characters (preferably one to four characters max). Include physical descriptions, any interesting or unusual character traits and any background history that is relevant to their character. This information may or may not be included in your actual novel. This doesn’t really matter as long as these profiles provide a brief and well-rounded portrayal of what the characters are all about.

5. An Author Profile.
This is all about you. If the agent likes your work this will help them to decide whether you are the type of person they feel they can work with and whether you have a viable future as a writer. It should be approximately a page in length. Include any information that is relevant to your writing or to the novel. Try and remember that this isn’t a CV. The agent isn’t interested in your exam results, how clever you are or your career promotions. You might be a verifiable genius in many areas of your life, but the agent is really only interested in whether or not you can write and your prospects for publication. It’s also not your biography so don’t go overboard. You may have driven a train or travelled the world for the last thirty-five years but unless you have drawn on these experiences for your writing then they’re pretty much irrelevant. Include any experience that you may have had with the publishing industry and any work that you have had published. My advice is don’t lie or stretch the truth even a little. Ok people do it all the time with their CVs and job applications, but as a writer of any calibre you should be capable of taking even the most uneventful life and making it seem interesting. And when it comes down to it your success or failure ultimately rests on the standard of your first three chapters and no amount of lies will ever improve the quality of your writing. So it’s up to you.

6. The First Three Chapters Of The Novel.
This is fairly self-explanatory. If your work doesn’t have chapters then it should have. It’s a novel and chapters are an integral part of the format. It you insist on contravening convention then you’ll simply have to send the part of it that approximates three chapters in length (generally anything from around 3 to 40 printed pages). Make sure that you have a title page at the beginning of your chapters that contains clearly and unambiguously the title of the novel, your name (and pseudonym if using one), your address, phone number, email and contact details plus the number of words (to the nearest thousand) contained in the complete manuscript. If they like your submission it needs to be clear how the agency can contact you, otherwise they just might not bother.

7. Return Postage and Packing.
Get this right. If you include too little postage, or packing that’s too small then your submission will go straight to the bin unread and you won’t hear anything about it ever again. If agencies had to pay to contact all the writers who send them unsolicited submissions then they would be out of business in a week.

Typeface

The entire submission must be typed or printed. Never ever send anything that is handwritten. You’d just as well throw it in the bin yourself and save on the postage. In this day and age (in the West anyway) everyone should be able to get frequent access to a computer with minimal effort. If you’re serious about being a writer and you don’t own a computer and printer then you should. These days you can pick up a fairly basic model that will meet all your word processing and printing needs for a few hundred quid. Consider it an investment in your future. Consider it your bread and butter. Consider it essential. Consider it anything but get out there and get one because you might very well be the next Jack Kerouac but without the typed word you’re nothing.
Everything in your submission (the letter of introduction excepted)

must

be

double

spaced.

Agents read so many submissions and manuscripts that they regularly suffer from eyestrain. And an agent with a migraine is never going to be your friend. In addition to this it leaves plenty of space for them to make notes as they read.
Traditionally Times Roman is the font of business correspondence. Whereas fonts such as Courier and American Typewriter are considered a more apt choice for writers because they mimic the appearance of the type produced by the old manual typewriter that all editors and agents were used to reading. When deciding which font to select for your writing it is worth remembering that with Times and Times New Roman each letter is a different width as opposed to Courier, Courier New and American Typewriter, which set every letter out at the same width. What this means in practical terms is that with Times you get more words per line and therefore per page. On the one hand this is advantageous for paper and postage costs but on the other hand it will subconsciously slow down the pace of your writing for a reader. Fonts such as Courier will give you fewer words per page but will pick up the pace as the reader is forced to turn the pages much faster.
Never ever use a font such as Arial, Helvetica. These are popular examples of ‘sans serif’ fonts, which means they do not have the curlicues that lead from one letter to the next. They are formed to make each letter a design feature in itself. To read these fonts a reader subconsciously sees each letter as an individual symbol rather than forming words and so then has to concentrate to put all the letters together. Therefore for any substantial amount of text (i.e. more than a few words or a sentence as a title) they are totally useless. Should you insist on using one of these fonts then essentially you’re giving the reader the impression that your writing is extremely slow and exceedingly hard work.
Whichever font you decide to use it should be 12pt size (titles and headers excepted) and DOUBLE SPACED. Do not justify your text. It spaces all the words separately to give straight left and right margins which although can look tidier to some eyes just makes it more difficult to read. Also as the justification tool used on modern word processors is not particularly sophisticated it will give a truly false impression of how your work will look on the published page because anything a computer can do to set out the text is nothing to what a professional typesetter will do to it to make it the most pleasurable reading experience possible when setting out your work to be published.
Always use a good quality white paper for your submission. Cream and champagne type papers may look professional but leave them to businessmen and lawyers because once again they make the words harder to read off the page. The weight of the paper should be at least 80grams or preferably 100grams. Any less and the words from the page beneath the one being read can be seen through the page, which greatly detracts a reader from the reading experience.
Finally do not staple, bind or fix together any of the pages of the submission. They must all be loose. Agents hate things that are fixed together because it means that they can’t take a couple of pages home to read on the tube, in the car, on the toilet or in the park if they so choose. And because of their hectic schedules they regularly do have to do this to get everything read. So make sure all your pages are clearly numbered and have your name (and pseudonym if using one) and the title of your novel on them. This means that if the secretary trips over with an armful of submissions or the slush pile collapses beneath it’s own weight then your work can easily be sorted and put back together in the right order rather than going straight to the shredder in a confused jumble.

Stack The Deck

Above and beyond all get your submission right. Proof read it over and over, tweak and adjust it so that it is tailored to suit each and every agency you send it to. Even the smallest of spelling or grammatical errors will spell out amateur to the agent and lead them to believe that you are unprofessional and not taking your writing seriously. This isn’t a frame of mind you want an agent to be in when they’re considering your submission. Bear in mind that agencies are so inundated with unsolicited submissions that they really do need little reason to return them unread. So stack the deck in your favour. Don’t give them any excuse. Make it easy on them and your submission will at least get read and considered. Whether it succeeds or not hangs on the quality of your writing and that of course is down to you and you alone.

What’s The Damage?

The postage costs for your submission are determined by exactly how much material you’re sending. Generally my past submissions have cost between £1.25 and £2.50. Double this to include return postage and packing, factor-in the cost of ink, paper and envelopes and realistically you’re talking between £4 and £6 per submission. Bear in mind that if you’re the tenacious type you could very well end up sending out hundreds of these. So you really do need to be confident that your writing is of a publishable standard before you begin to submit.
In theory the unwritten rule is that you should only submit your work to one agency at a time. Although in practice given the amount of time it takes each agency to consider a submission and the fact that it is unsolicited I generally favour submitting my work to around four to five agencies at any one time. Usually it will take an agency around four to six weeks to consider and return a standard submission. In the mean time kick back and relax, throw yourself into your next writing project, your other career, your marriage, your love life or your hobbies and try not to think too much about it.

Rejection

When the agency returns your submission it will contain either a letter of rejection or a letter requesting the complete manuscript for consideration. In the case of the latter send it to them as soon as possible (this tends to be costly) and once again make sure that you send the requisite return postage and packing (double costly). Should an agency like your submission enough to request the complete manuscript for reading then it is only fair that you send it to them exclusively. Even if more than one agent has requested it you can’t expect them to invest the time reading 100,000 or so of your words when it’s also on offer to ten other agents. It will normally take an agency around six to eight weeks to consider a full manuscript and if they haven’t got back to you in this time then by all means contact them by telephone, email or letter to see what the situation is. If they can’t give you a satisfactory answer as to how long it’s going to take then state that after a reasonable time period i.e. two to three more weeks, you will be sending the manuscript to the next agent who has requested it.
It’s almost a statistical certainty that you will receive a few if not a good many rejections. Try not to take it personally. The publishing industry is littered with a history of best selling novels that were rejected time after time before publication. And who knows, one day if you do get published then these letters might actually be worth something.
Many of the rejections will be standard and impersonal letters (some won’t even be signed or have your name on them), which are used as a matter of course to reject submissions. Don’t expect a full literary criticism of your work or indeed any feedback whatsoever. Agents do not have the time to do this nor is it why they are there. Remember that these rejections do not necessarily mean that your writing is bad, all they mean is that that individual agent is not confident that he can sell your work to a publishing house. This could be for a multitude of reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of your writing. It might be that the agent in question already has a variety of authors on his client list who are writing similar material to yours. It might be that the agent believes there is not a large enough audience in the current commercial climate to make your novel financially viable. These things are out of your control. Don’t fret. Individual agents at agencies, climates, tastes, trends and client lists can change virtually overnight. So you can always re-submit your material to an agency in six to twelve months if things change and you’re still not published.
However if you receive a number of rejections on the same basis i.e. the characters are unbelievable, the standard of the writing is atrocious or the plot is too far-fetched, then perhaps it is something that you need to address. Sit down re-write, re-work, re-edit, re-read and polish your novel if possible before sending out any further submissions. If enough professional people in the industry are pointing out the same problems with your work then the chances are they’re right despite what your family and friends keep telling you.
Above and beyond all don’t start phoning or writing to agents demanding that they explain their reasons for rejecting your work, or to rant at them about how they’ve missed the chance to take on a sure-fire bestseller. They don’t have the time to listen to your grievances nor should they have to. Moaning at or abusing them in any way shape or form will get you absolutely nowhere, although it will very likely make you some enemies within the industry that you really could do without. So keep your composure, retain your pride, keep your integrity in tact and save your time for your writing and sending out new submissions.

Soul Searching

Still think you’re a writer? If rejection after rejection is getting you down, if you’re writing less and less as time goes by then perhaps you need to take some time out and think about things a bit. What do you want out of life? Writing is a frustrating, emotionally draining, time consuming, difficult and above all mostly lonely occupation. Even when it comes to the published authors out there it is worth remembering that only a tiny percentage of them actually make enough money from their writing to finance a half decent standard of living. The vast majority of them still work other jobs to make ends meet despite the fact that their work sits proudly on bookshop shelves in numerous countries. So if it’s all getting too much for you, if it’s all getting you down and you’re struggling to find the time and energy to write anymore, if you’re permanently fed up and disillusioned then you may have to consider the possibility that you might not be cut from the writer’s cloth after all. So have a think and maybe you might just be better off buying a lottery ticket each week instead. In the years that follow you’ll always know that you wrote a novel and that alone is one hell of an achievement.
On the other hand if through all the rejections, mixed emotions and turmoil you’re still writing or you’re writing more than ever, if you’re writing not simply to get published but because you can’t stop, if you’re writing because you can’t not write then congratulations and respect to you because you truly are a writer through and through. All that remains to be seen is if you have any talent. So stick all the rejection slips to your walls as a testament to your effort and keep up the good work, keep writing and keep submitting. Who knows you might just be the next Dickens, Burroughs or Proust after all. You might just be the next big thing. Good luck.

S.D.

N.B. The author of this article is himself unpublished at present and as such this article does not pretend to be an absolute guide to anything. It is simply a collection of information that this author has amassed during his time as a writer through his own personal experiences with the publishing industry. It is posted here in the hope that it might enable some of you budding writers to avoid some of the pitfalls that this author has had to claw his way out of in the past leaving him wiser, but somewhat dirtier. Should you believe that any of the information or advice contained is inaccurate or if you have any further advice to add then please feel free to contact us, and this article will be amended accordingly if deemed necessary.

Please see our other articles:

Print on Demand Publishers

Getting an Idea for a Book

Tips for a Successful Book

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