I'm not sure if anyone is interested, but I thought I'd offer. ^-^

About Me:

I'm 23 years old. I spent 6 months interning at a publishing company in New York City, have worked as a professional copyeditor, and am currently earning my master's degree in Publishing and Writing. I'm very familiar with the world of publishing and what processes you need to follow to become published.

What I'm offering:

There's a lot that goes into publishing, and much of it may come in the form of terms you aren't familiar with: Query letter, Slush Pile, SASE, etc. If you're trying to publish a book or short story, I'm willing to help you understand the process, develop your publishing proposal, and figure out which publishing companies, agents, or periodicals would be the best places to query.

This thread is to help you understand the technical world of an otherwise creative process.

Update:

I am currently interning at two publishers in Boston--a university press that I guarantee you've heard of and a nonfiction trade publisher that specializes in cookbooks and parenting books. I am also extremely busy. Please continue to post any questions you may have in the thread, but if you want a quick reply, PM me to let me know you posted. Otherwise I'm likely to not notice for over a month.

I'm saving this post for in case I want to post a FAQ or anything like that later.

XD You know, just in case anyone asks any questions. <3

oh wow!
o.o *needs this kind of help*

well actually I just like to know how it would work? Like where do I start?

As of currently I don't have anything like ready to be "published" but I've always wanted to one day, but I have no idea where to start?

^-^ Well, first off, what kind of thing are you looking at publishing? Short stories, novels, or non-fiction books? (I'd assume that it's not non-fiction books, but you never know, and there are slightly different policies for each. XD)

Well if I ever publish a book, it'll be a novel or a short stories. I've considered a Children's Book too, but I'll probably have to kidnap an artists since I fail at drawing. xDD

Edit: I looked back at this and decided to add headings so that it looked less imposing. XD

Actually, unless you do the illustrations yourself, children's publishing companies almost always match you with an illustrator. Most children's publishers have artists on staff or freelance artists on call, so they usually don't appreciate you picking one yourself. XD All you'd have to do is write the story and get that accepted. They'd take care of the art.

Starting with Short Stories:

If you're interested in both novels and short stories, then I definitely recommend writing some short stories. The fact is, short stories have little reception and you get paid almost nothing for them. This wasn't true 50 years ago, but fewer and fewer periodicals are accepting short stories, and those that do pay very little. However, they're a great way to get started publishing, and a large number of people who want to publish novels start with short stories because it gives them some credentials. It's much better to go to a publisher or agent saying, "I've published 10 short stories" even if they're in small, barely known periodicals, then saying, "I've published nothing, but I swear I'm good."

There are a lot of novelists who have never written a short story though. They're very different arts, and even the best of authors can have trouble telling a story in 20 pages or less.

Book Publishing - Who to Approach

Once you're publishing a book, you have two options. You can go to a small publisher, or you can try to find an agent. The large publishers won't even look at you without an agent. For a first book, a small publisher will probably be your best option. It's true that they won't be able to sell as many copies of your book as a big publisher (they don't have the facilities, the staff, or the resources), but because they publish less books a year, they will give your book personal attention and do their best to market it. Very often, if your first book becomes a huge success or you go on to become a successful author, the small publisher will sell the rights of your book to a larger publisher who will be able to get more copies out. And having one book published always helps to get the next one published.

None of this matters, though, if you can't get them to accept the first book, right? XD

Book Publishing - Where to Find Publishers and Agents

There are several resources that you can use to find publishers and agents. Literary Market Place is probably the best, buy you can also use Writer's Handbook or any number of online resources. When you do find them, make sure you check for a website. The books, especially, aren't always up to date. Publishing companies and agents that want unsolicited manuscripts (manuscripts that they haven't specifically asked for. Often, especially in non-fiction, publishers come up with an idea for a book and approach the author about writing it) will have something on their website specifying exactly what they want in a publishing proposal.

Publishing Proposals - The Basics

Publishing proposals for fictional works usually consist of a query letter (the hardest part of the proposal), a plot summary, one to three sample chapters, and an SASE. Let me address each of these in turn.

Query Letter – This is especially hard if you’ve never published a book before. The basic outline for a query letter is information about the book (Title, word count, audience), quick synopsis of book (just enough to get them interested; you don’t need to give away the whole plot here), author information (what you’ve published, why you’re the best person to have written this book), and end it with something along the lines of, “I would be happy to send you a manuscript for review. Feel free to contact me at any time.” If you have no publications, it’s better not to say anything at all. Never tell them that you’re unpublished.

This should never be more than one page. You can switch around elements, depending on what you think is most important, but it is vital to catch their interest immediately, first few sentences if possible. Editors and agents receive hundreds of these things a day, and if you don’t have a good query letter, then they won’t bother looking at anything else.

Plot Summary – Also no more than a page if possible, though this one is allowed to go over. Still, brevity is important. You just want to hit all of the major plot points, beginning to end.

Sample Chapters – Each publishing company and agent wants a different amount from the manuscript. Some say one chapter, some say three chapters, some say 30 pages. It is very important to do exactly what they want. Many novice authors make the mistake of thinking that the more they send the better. After all, an agent can’t get the full feel of their manuscript from just the first 10 pages. Editors and agents have to read a lot. They are usually at least a month behind on reading through the slush pile (unsolicited manuscripts that didn’t immediately catch someone’s attention. Some are never looked at). If they see that your proposal is short, they’re likely to go right to it because it won’t take long to get through.

SASE – This just stands for Self Addressed Stamped Envelope. If you don’t include one of these, then you’re likely to never hear back from a publisher, because they have no intention to go through the work of finding an envelope, addressing it to you, and paying for a stamp. Sometimes, if an SASE isn’t included, they don’t even look at the proposal.

x.x This is probably a lot of information to digest all at once. Let me know if you have any questions. I can go into further details on just about everything I said here.

Finally got to it. xD After several hours later *cough*

*has copied all the information*

Wow totally didn't know this. xD Thank you.

Don't really have any more questions (unless there are more steps?) cause as I've said, I don't even have a story ready to be published yet. ^^;;;
Interesting though. Hmmm *looks at writing*
perhaps it's time I actually get around to finishing them?

Oh wait I do have a question. Editing/Betaing or Grammar in general. I have really poor grammar. It's improved over the years, but it's still on the bad side. Like sometimes I forget words and stuff.

Does this like... effect their judgement? It's not like super bad where it's like OMG I can't get past the first paragraph because it's just full of spelling mistakes and poor sentence structure.

But bad enough where it's like, "Oh she forgot the word her here, this should be in past tense." But enough to get through the entire story without really effecting anything major.

Does that make sense? Should I probably get a bunch of my friends to edit or find a real editor before sending them my proposal?

It's always a good idea to have people edit before hand, but whether you want to hire a professional is your judgment call. Having it professionally edited will certainly do nothing but help your chances; however, it is expensive. I usually charge $20 dollars an hour for freelance, and that's minimum wage for editors. Say your book is 200 pages. Depending on the quality of the material, that could get up to 1000 dollars. I had one project that I charged over 2000 dollars for, and he really got off easy considering how many extra, unexpected hours I put into it. XD

Look at your material and really consider what you think would be best. If it's just occasional, minor grammatical errors, but you (and a couple of other people who have read it) think that the quality still shines through, then the publishers are likely to overlook a few things. After all, no matter how good your work is, they're still going to hire a copyeditor to read through and fix errors.

However, if you think this is a serious issue and your manuscript needs a lot of work, then hire an editor.

It’s always harder with fiction. In nonfiction, there are people who are undisputed experts on a subject but can’t write very well. For them, publishers certainly don’t mind paying extra for an editor to do a full overhaul of the manuscript. With fiction, though, there are just a lot of people with good ideas who want to publish them, so grammar is certainly more likely to factor into their decisions. But, as I said, if your manuscript shines despite these errors, they’ll still take it.

It really is a judgment call.

I have had one book published, and wanted to see about getting an agent. Do you have any advice about it? I know a co-author of mine said dont go for them if they have a reading fee and that a good agent wont charge you to "try out"

I have a question as well, if I submit a short story or novel to one place do I need to wait until they reply before I try other places? If I can submit it to other places at the same time then should I tell them that I am doing so?

She Who Must Not Be Named: Definitely don't go for agents who charge a reading fee. In fact, don't go for agents that charge any fees. Good agents make money off your book only when it's published. At that point, they get a percentage of your profits. If you don't make money, they don't make money.


Saber Alli: When you are first submitting stories and novels, submit them to as many places as you want to. It might be a long time before you hear back from publishers, especially with novels. You don't want to wait 8 months to hear back from someone just to have it declined and start over again.

There is a point when a publisher is considering your novel that they will ask that you don't send it anyone else. That comes later though.

You don't need to mention that you're sending manuscripts to multiple publishers because, these days, publishers expect that.

How about nationality? lol.
Does nationality matters to which publisher I sent?
Since... I cannot find a famous enough publisher at my home country? lol.

As a whole, I don't think nationality matters, though I haven't come upon that issue myself. When I was working with the slush pile during my internship, every submission was from someone who lived in the United States.

When you send a submission, you include a Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope (SASE), so you've paid to send your submission them, and you've paid for them to send their response. It's more expensive for you to send to a different country, but it's no difference for them. After that, most correspondence is by e-mail.

The only real issue I see with sending to a publishing company in a different country is in the language itself. Even if other countries that speak the same language (United States, England, Australia), there are very different words, phrases, spellings, etc. This means that a United States publishing company will have a lot more editorial work to do to prepare a Australian book for press in America than an American book. Look at how different Harry Potter is in England than in the United States. As such, your book will have to be significantly better than the American competition to make the publishing company think that it's worth the extra effort. Either that, or you need to already have a name.

Lol, better to have different English than a total different language? Chinese and Japanese. *laughs*

But you are working in US?

Yeah. I'm not currently at a company, though. I'm just taking grad classes and doing freelance. I'll probably be back with a company some time within the next half a year.

My own home country is out of question. Because their language is MALAY. I bet not many people know what language is that even.

So My best 2 languages would be English and CHinese. I would have to find publishers from the country which use them as main. Like UK, US, Australia, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. :?

Thank you so much, this thread has been most helpful!

I have a question I've always wanted to ask, if you're still answering? How do you go about finding periodicals to publish short stories in? I don't even know where to start, really.

I'm looking for information specific to children's book publishing. I know a little bit about the publishing process, having taken writing courses and researched information, but I'd be interested in what someone in the editing industry has to say.

So, one thing I was wondering was about when do you write the story?
I read somewhere you write a summary and/or a chapter or something of the story and send it into a publisher before you actually get to really writing it, and this was a guide for first time publishers, I think it seemed like that would more be something a more established writer would do, or is that just what publishers would rather have so they don't have to read crap they wouldn't dream of publishing.

I have heard if you dont have any previous credits and you're talking about a novel then you should be about 3/4ths done if not complete. As Tamora Pierce said, "Lots of people will start writing a book, it takes a special kind to finish one!"

And I just go to Barnes and Noble and buy Literary Magazines and then look through them for the info about submitting a story! Or my latest short story to get published was one I submitted to a contest I found in one of those magazines.

Sorry! I hadn't realized anyone was posting here. <3 Feel free to PM me if I take to long to answer questions.

Yarrian: There are some really good books that list periodicals that publish short stories. For example, there's a writer's market just for people who write short stories. This list is also a pretty good starting point:

http://www.newpages.com/npguides/litmags.htm

JoieD: That's great! Children's publishing is actually what I most want to get into. ^-^ What exactly are you looking for?

Serafim: For fiction, you always need to have the entire book written before you start looking for a publisher. I think what you read was actually saying that publishers just want you to send a summary or first chapter. That's definitely true. Whenever publishers get something really long in the mail, there first thought is, "I don't want to read that." So, instead, you send something short, and if they like it, they ask you for more.

You definitely don't want them to ask you for more, and then have to tell them that you're not done yet.

Saber: Thank you for answering questions in my absence. XD I'll try to check back here more often.

Thank you for the link, it looks very helpful.

This thread was really helpful. Thankyou for posting this. I have been writing a book lately, but I wasn't sure what to do with it after until now.

And now I want to pick up my stories again. xD Thanks for making this thread; it's been quite helpful. ^^