Chuck Ross gained notice when he submitted the manuscript of an acclaimed novel to publishers, who all turned it down.
Chuck Ross gained notice when he submitted the manuscript of an acclaimed novel to publishers, who all turned it down.
Bump for career advice.
It never ceases to amaze me just how many people imagine that the way a book is published is simply typing it up or printing it out, putting it in an envelope and sending it out to publishers.
The three critical pieces to getting your work eventually read are: 1) Hire a professional editor. Pay someone to go through your work, find grammatical errors, plot problems, or areas which need revision. 2) Write a good cover letter and synopsis. You have three paragraphs to get across your book, and one of those paragraphs effectively has to sell your book - think of it as how you’d describe the work in one paragraph in a catalog. 3) The sample: The first few chapters of your book. IF someone gets through the cover letter and your synopsis page, they’ll read your sample.
If you consider it logically, this all makes sense. There are maybe ten people in the US who are paid professionally to read entire books, just to read the book and give their opinion of that book. There’s no one sitting in a publishing office who spends their day reading random books that are submitted through the mail.
As for professional editors - again, there’s not a whole lot of them out there, and while they aren’t cheap, they also can be your best advertisers. Even there, they’ll also want a synopsis, a cover letter and those sample chapters. They aren’t going to want to invest heavily in your work without complete assurance that you’re not out to waste their time.
In every business, time is money. You have to use the scant moments of time you get from publishers effectively. That manuscript might be the best book ever written, but odds are it won’t be. And no publisher can afford to sit there and hand out manuscripts to be read on the random chance that it might be great.
Bump for what should be an interesting thread.
I have a novel on the shelf that I wrote for my own amusement. Never will publish it, but this topic fascinates me.
Planet killer. How selfish.
Publishers don’t read, don’t even open unsolicited submissions, as they are afraid of copyright infringement lawsuits. The way to publishing is through literary agents, and their paid readers of the slush piles, those starving English graduates, and the way to agents is through published authors sweating day job gigs at universities. That’s what I’ve read about the biz. Tough crowds everywhere.
I’ve helped two people edit their books. For free. One took it to a published writer for further research and editing, its publication is still in question. The other published it through some small press, thankfully gave me no credit (as far as I know), I say ‘thankfully’ because my contribution was minor, and because it is New Age gibberish that I would prefer not to be associated with, and my editing had less to do with the meaning of the text, if there was any, than with the grammar and cliches within it. (Imitating a true professional hack, I kept my mouth shut working with this guy.)
bkmk