Glen and Karen Bledsoe --> articles --> three questions
Articles Index: Site Index: Maybe you don't know anything about
the publishing business, but you have a wonderful story that
has been in your head for years and you've finally written
it down. What do you do next? Probably your first questions
are one or more of the questions below. These are the three
questions most commonly asked on varioius writing bulletin
boards. Scroll down to read the articles, or use these
links: 1) I have a book
I wrote. Where do I send it to get it published?
To answer the question, there is
no one single central place where you can send a story
you wrote to have it printed up and sold in stores. If
you want to see your story published, you must learn to
write and behave as a career author. You must prepare a
professional product and be able to market that product.
If all you want is to have your
story printed and bound so you have some copies to give
to friends and relatives, take it to your local print
shop and ask them how much it will be. Do NOT by any
means answer one of those ads for publishers that you see
in the classified section in writer's magazines. They
will sing the praises of your book and tell you how they
will "publish" it for you for "only" a thousand dollars
or so -- then ship you several cases of the printed and
bound books and inform you that you're on your own when
it comes to marketing them. These "publishers" are called
vanity publishers, and they are well known in the
industry. Many have now moved to modern print-on-demand
publishing. Some will "publish" your book for free, while
others still charge a fee, but most (with a few notable
exceptions that we will discuss in another article) are
still vanity publishers. Major booksellers won't touch
books that bear the logo of a vanity press. Your local
print shop can do a terrific print job in smaller
quantities for a lot less money and a lot fewer
headaches. If you want more than a few copies, start your
own publishing company and use a good printing and
distribution service such as Books
Just Books. Remember, real publishers don't
have to advertise for authors. Real publishers pay YOU
when they publish your work. However if you're ready to play
by the publishers' rules, if you love writing, if career
writing is your goal, if your favorite part of the book
store is the children's section, if you'd rather write
children's literature than anything else, then we wish
you a hearty welcome. Children's book authors may be in
competition with one another for publishing slots, but
it's one of the friendliest, most cooperative
competitions you'll ever see, with experienced authors
offering help and advice to the inexperienced all the
time. We hope you'll find this site helpful as you get
started. The long answer: Children's books
are products. Publishers intend to make a profit off of
them. That product on the shelf, then, had better look as
enticing as possible. It's the pictures that attract us
to picture books, after all. This is why publishers hire
their own artists. Illustrators submit porfolios of
their work to the art departments of publishing houses.
There the work is reviewed and either rejected or kept on
file for future projects. Publishers usually try to
maintain a consistent "look" to their lines of books and
will choose illustrators who help them maintain their
"look." They also strive to hire the big names in
children's book illustration: Chris VanAllsburg, Tomie
dePaola, James Marshall, Kevin Henkes, Bruce Degen,
Babette Cole, Audrey and Don Wood, Leo and Diane Dillon,
to name a few. If at least some of these names aren't
familiar to you, spend some time in the children's
section of your local independent bookstore. There is no room for mildly
talented hobbyists in this profession. Nor is there room
for authors who insist that their manuscripts be
illustrated a certain way only. Publishers will match
text style with illustration style to fit their own
vision. Fortunately that vision is usually as attractive
as they can make it. 3) How do I
know an editor won't steal my ideas? Should I get a
copyright to protect my writing before I send it
out? The mail has just come in,
bringing with it several handcarts piled high with new,
unsolicited manuscripts. Some of these are directed to
specific editors, who either read them or pass them on to
their editorial assistants (if they are lucky enough to
have them) to be screened. Most, however, end up in a
common slush pile, to be gone through by a flock of
overworked readers for whom nearsightedness is fast
becoming a way of life. In fact, in some houses, ALL
unsolicited manusripts go straight to the common slush
pile. The readers have their orders.
They have a fair idea of what the editors are looking
for. If they find a promising manuscript, they will pass
it on to the appropriate editor. The rest get a common,
unsigned, form rejection letter and are sent back via
their enclosed postage. Those with no enclosed postage
are destroyed at the publisher's expense, which doesn't
make the publisher very happy. Every now and then the slush pile
becomes so gargantuan that the editors and readers pull
the equivalent of an all-nighter to weed it out. Their
purpose here is to reject, not accept, and reject they
will, even manuscripts that show some promise. The
writing had better shine like chrome or it won't survive
the process. Only about 1-3% of the
unsolicited manuscripts received pass this
stage. That figure, however, isn't quite
as dreadful as it sounds when you consider that a huge
proportion of those manuscripts are completely unsuitable
to the house. Many are the work of dabbling amateurs with
fond memories of Mother reading stories of little bunnies
who were good. Some are written by moralizers who are
sure their books will fix what's wrong with kids today.
Still others have cover letters with the deadly phrase,
"I know this isn't along the lines of what you usually
publish, but..." And some are written by trend-followers
who don't understand that once the trend has seen print,
it's already too late to get in on it. Those that are passed on to the
editors get a more thorough reading, but they must still
compete with manuscripts that agents are selling, and
agents are very good at what they do. Editors know that
agents have already done the screening process and are
presenting the cream of what has been submitted to them.
Is it any wonder that agents have an editor's
ear? Once an editor selects a handful
of winners, the selection process continues with
committees, marketers, and others, with the manuscripts
passing through many hands before the author is finally
offered a contract. Now, where in that process do you
see any incentive for an editor to steal
ideas? Every publishing house is flooded
daily with hopeful manuscripts. With such a
superabundance of material, no editor of any reputable
house has any need to steal material from authors. Very,
very occasionally you hear of an editor at a small,
brand-new publishing house or vanity press who steals
ideas or text. Publishers like that don't survive very
long. They are by far the minority in the
business. So, should you copyright your
material just in case? Absolutely not. Only purchase a
copyright in your name if you are self-publishing.
Current U.S. copyright laws (see the U.S.
Copyright Office site) protect
your work the moment you put in on paper. If a publisher
accepts your work, the publisher will take out an
official copyright in your name (or should -- check your
contract to see who owns the copyright). Copyrighted
manuscripts are the mark of an amateur and are often
rejected outright. Furthermore, a copyright puts a
fixed date on your manuscript. What if you end up
submitting it to many publishers over several years? That
copyright date will be a dead giveaway that your material
has been shopped around a great deal. Finally, a copyright on your work
presents a legal complication that no publisher wants to
have to deal with: if the editors ask for revisions of
the book or story, does the copyright cover the original
material, or the revised material, or both? Easier just
to pitch the whole manuscript than to hire literary
lawyers to straighten the thing out. The most important thing to
remember is that while text is copyrightable, ideas are
not. Authors often borrow ideas from material they see on
the bookstore shelves, but they make the ideas their own
by giving them a fresh twist and using their own
material. Stealing ideas whole cloth is rare. You may
think the editor stole your idea when you submit a
manuscript for a biography of Abraham Lincoln that is
rejected, and you see a similar book come out on the
shelves a few months later. It's highly doubtful that the
editor got the idea from you, considering that it can
take a year or more to produce a book. No, in cases like
these, the truth is that your great idea isn't nearly as
original as you think. That editor may receive a hundred
biographies of Lincoln over the transom each year, and
decided that particular manuscript which ended up being
published had something fresh to say. Your job, then, is
to thoroughly research what is already out there and
present the editor with something new and
exciting. For more information, see "Copyrights
and Meteorites" by Chuck Rothman on the Science
Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America site. Recommended Books: Here are
some books we recommend for beginners: You
Can Write Children's Books You
Can Write Children's Books
Workbook How
to Write a Children's Book and Get it
Published The
Business of Writing for
Children
The real world of
children's book publishing is nothing like what you are
probably imagining. It's not a sunny office full of
friendly editors happy to print up the stories that your
children or grandchildren love. It's Big Business, and
there are people who earn their living by it. It's a
world of competition, deadline pressure, short tempers,
and the bottom line. Major publishing houses are owned by
multi-national conglomerations for whom profit, not
literary art, is all important. Sorry.
The short answer:
No.
The editor who steals
author's ideas is a myth generated by people with few
original ideas of their own who spot books similar to the
ones they just submitted and think their ideas were
stolen. To understand why idea-stealing is so rare,
picture what goes on behind the scenes at a publishing
house:
Harold Underdown
F&W Publications, 2004
Tracey Dils
Writer's Digest Books, 1998
Tracey Dils
Writer's Digest Books, 2004
Barbara Seuling
Wiley, 2004
Aaron Shepard
Shepard Publications, 2000
Glen and Karen Bledsoe --> articles --> three questions