Glen and Karen Bledsoe --> articles --> Submissions --> Researching Publishers
Articles Index: Site Index: In the U.S. alone, there are thousands of book
publishers, each turning out anywhere from one or two to
dozens or even hundreds of books each year. Over 50,000
books are published in the U.S. annually. Yet those 50,000 books represent somewhere between
1-3% of the total number of manuscripts submitted. What, you say? Just a 1-3% chance of getting
published? What is a writer to do in the face of such
odds? Give up? Of course not! Cheat? Absolutely not! Send
bribes? Not a chance. What the writer must do is to be
smart and totally professional about submissions.
Remember, writing may be an art and a craft, but it is
also a business. Publishing, too, is a business, and the
business of publishing is to sell books and magazines at
a profit. In the eyes of the publisher, your precious
manuscript is just another potential product, and the
bottom line is, "Will this sell?" So how do you find the right match between your
manuscript and a publisher? Understanding what goes on at the publisher To avoid the most common and most embarassing mistakes
when submitting, it helps to understand what happens to
your manuscript after you put it in the mail. If it is
addressed to a specific editor, it may go directly to
that editor's in box, especially if it is marked
"requested material." You ONLY mark it as such if it
really has been requested; that is, you sent a query and
the editor asked to see the manuscript. Manuscripts that are not sent to a specific editor
(and many that are, depending on the publisher), go to
one common storage place known as the slush pile. Hired
readers or junior editors have the grand pleasure of
sorting the slush until their eyes cross, stuffing
unwanted material back into their self-addressed return
envelopes, discarding those that did not come with
self-addressed return envelopes, and occasionally, very
occasionally, finding something usable. Readers and
editors have their orders. They know what kind of work
their house accepts and what kind it does not. If your
work is unsuitable for that house, it will be returned,
no matter how good the writing might be. At some publishers, all manuscripts are logged
electronically. Even if they are not, it's not uncommon
for all manuscripts to end up in the common slush pile,
so sending the same manuscript to different editors at
the same publisher, or different imprints at the same
publisher, only increases the slush pile -- as well as
the irritation of the readers. Manuscripts that have some potential may be sent on to
another editor, or may be brought before an editorial
committee for further discussion. It is only after much
discussion and debate that manuscripts to fill slots in
the publishing schedule are finally selected. For a much more in-depth look at the process of
manuscript review and selection, read the darkly funny
article on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of
America site, The
Sobering Saga of Myrtle the Manuscript, by Tappan
King. This is required reading for the beginner! Also
check out editor Harold Underdown's article on What
Happens Inside a Children's Publishing Company? And if you haven't read it already, go back and read
our article on 10 Common
Submissions Mistakes so you can avoid the worst. Ready? Now let's find a publisher. What to do In choosing the best publishers to approach with your
work, here are some questions you should be asking
yourself: Who is my audience? Who publishes this kind of work? Another excellent source of potential publishers is
the trade journal Publisher's
Weekly. The subscription is expensive, but if you
can find the Spring and Fall Children's Book Editions at
a bookstore or at your library (university libraries
often subscribe to this journal), get them and study
them. Publishers take out large, colorful advertisements
and you can see and compare dozens of publishers in each
issue. You can also read the book announcements to see
what new books are being published or are in
production. If you have an article for a magazine, see if your
library carries that magazine and read through several
issues. Each magazine has its own "feel," so writing a
science article for, say, Boy's Life will require
a different approach that writing a science article for
Dolphin Log or American Girl. What are the publisher's terms? Some publishers, especially magazines and school and
library publishers, pay a flat fee for your work and buy
all rights. This means that once you accept payment, the
work is no longer yours. In situations of work-for-hire,
where you are hired to write a specific book, this may be
appropriate (see our article, "The
Work-for-hire question," for more
information). However, if you have created the work
yourself from the start, you would probably be reluctant
to sign away all rights to it. While flat-fee terms are
less common in book publishing, they are becoming more
and more common in magazine publishing. If you are submitting to magazines, the best terms are
"First North American Serial Rights." This means that the
magazine pays you a fee for the right to be the first to
publish your work in North America. You still retain all
other rights to the work, including the right to resell
it to other magazines that do reprints. You will also get
paid if the magazine you sold it to puts together an
anthology that includes your work. First North American
Serial Rights are becoming increasingly rare in the
magazine publishing world as more and more magazines are
now buying all rights. Buying all rights is good for the
magazine, because they don't have to track down authors
if someone asks to reprint an article, and they can take
the reprint fee for themselves. Clearly, though, it's bad
for authors -- though some magazines that buy all rights
will contact authors if the article is reprinted and
offer them part or all of the reprint fee. What does the publisher want me to do? Once you have your list of potential publishers and
have read their guidelines, and you have your manuscript,
query, and synopsis ready if requested, you're ready to
start submitting your work. In researching and
choosing book and magazine publishers, as well as agents,
contests, and other avenues of publication, a current
Writer's Market is the most essential piece of
equipment. 2006
Children's Writer's and Illustrator's
Market 2006
Guide to Literary
Agents Young writers can also
find publication opportunities: Young
Writer's Guide to Getting
Published Teen's
Guide to Getting
Published
Determining the best publisher for your work begins with
determining who your audience is. This may sound fairly
obvious -- "I'm writing for children, right?" -- yet the
question is not that simple. No two children are alike,
so we can't expect their tastes to be alike, either. If
you read the guidelines in the Writer's Market (see left
column), you'll see that publishers produce different
works for different age groups. Within specific age
groups, you may also have specific audiences, and there
may be publishers which cater specifically to those
audiences. For example, a picture book about a family
celebrating Yom Kippur would appeal to a publisher that
produces books on Judaism for young children, but would
probably not go over well in a publishing house that
produces primarily environmental non-fiction for older
children.
Go to a library or bookstore and look for books that are
similar to yours. See who publishes the books that reach
your target audience. Of course if you have, for example,
a book of garden crafts and you see another book of
garden crafts on the shelf that has been recently
published, you may not want to submit to that publisher.
However, other publishers that produce garden books or
craft books for kids may be interested, especially if you
can tell them why your book is different from the ones
that are already on the shelf.
Book publishers generally pay an advance and royalties.
An advance is money paid to you ahead of time for
publishing your work. It is called an "advance" because
it is an "advance against royalties." Once your book has
earned back the advance, you get paid royalties.
Publishers' listings usually do not state the size of the
advance, since that is negotiated individually. They
will, however, give you the royalty rates. It's best if
these are calculated according to the cover price (gross)
rather than the profits (net) on the book, since
calculating actual profit is a tangled process, and a
publisher may not claim a profit on a book for months or
years.
Read the publisher's guidelines carefully, either in the
Writer's Market or on the publisher's website (not all
publishers have online guidelines, but more and more have
been adding them). Follow their instructions to the
letter. If the publisher wants sample chapters and a
synopsis, then send exactly that. Don't send the whole
manuscript. Likewise, if the publisher wants the whole
manuscript, don't send a few sample chapters. While you
may get away with following your own rules once in a
while with some publishers, other publishers are not
amused. Remember the Myrtle the Manuscript scenario: all
those editors sorting through all that slush. They're
looking for reasons to reject your manuscript. Don't give
them one up front by failing to follow their rules.
Writer's Digest Books, 2005
Kathryn S. Brogan (Editor), Robert Lee Brewer (Editor),
Joanna Masterson (Editor)
Kathy Henderson
Writer's Digest Books, 2001
Danielle Dunn, Jessica Dunn
Prufrock Press, 1996
Glen and Karen Bledsoe --> articles --> Submissions --> Researching Publishers
