Novel Writing Made Less Impossible - Where Does My Manuscript Go?

Okay, you've got your manuscript edited. You edited it, edited it again when you heard it read back to you, edited it again based on your beta readers' suggestions, then edited it again after your copy and developmental editors got ahold of it. In fact, if you're like me (God help you), you probably edit something every time you lay eyes on the manuscript.

Now where will you send your brainchild to? What do you do from here?

Okay, this next part is pretty theoretical for me. You see, I've never gone this route, but I know what to do and what to expect.

I'm talking about what's called traditional publishing, as opposed to self-publishing (the cause which I champion, if you haven't noticed).

With traditional publishing, you should research the market. Who might be in the market to read your manuscript? Who's not reading new material at present? Who do you send it to inside the organization?

As I frequently tell people, too many people try to "shortcut" the submission guidelines. Sorry, but those rules ARE the shortcut. The publisher and/or editor is telling you the best way to get your story in front of their eyes. The guidelines also show how well you follow the rules, which gives them a clue as to how cooperative you might be later, because you'll still have quite a ways to go before your story sees print. You will also need to know whether YOU can submit your manuscript or whether the publisher only deals with literary agents at the start of the publishing process. Then you have to find an agent who will take you on.

Full disclosure: I don't have an agent. However, the process to find one is similar to finding a publisher that might want to read your manuscript. You see who wants to represent new writers who write your genre. You'll also find out how they want you to send the manuscript. Do they want to see a paper copy or will a .pdf suffice? Will they want the entire document or perhaps a few chapters? Yeah, agents have their own set of guidelines too.

Once you get an agent (you will sign a contract ... always have a lawyer read it before signing because some agents are more ethical than others ... you don't want to sign away your rights or receive any less money than you're due just because you didn't spend the money to have a professional look it over because I guarantee a professional attorney wrote it), they will approach the publishers. Chances are they should have a pre-existing relationship with a set of publishers and will know who will give your tale the proper love while being able to sell enough copies -- and ancillary rights such as films or graphic novels or whatever -- to make it worth their investment of time and money. Then you wait for notes on rewrites, which you'll do until everyone in Editorial is pleased with the result. You'll wait for an artist to do your cover, possibly provide interior illustrations. You'll probably be consulted on almost every aspect of the process of assembling your book for public sale. However, you might NOT have veto power, not with a first novel. And remember, you might have an idea how your book should be marketed, but it's not your publisher's job to greenlight your whims. Your publisher's job is to make money, using your book to do so.

And all this takes time. A lot of time. But in the end, you'll have published A BOOK! CONGRATULATIONS!!! Now, you have to sell the darn things. Oh, you want to know about self-publishing now? Can you wait a week?

​NEXT WEDNESDAY: The Joys of Self-Publishing ... Sort of ...

TOMORROW: Is Genre Blending Painful?

SPECIAL NOTE: My newest book, The Haunting Scripts of Bachelors Grove, is currently on sale. It's part memoir, part grimoire. The first half deals with my entry into writing indie comics and joining Silver Phoenix Entertainment. I print four of my comic scripts for The Haunting Tales of Bachelors Grove, three of which have not been produced yet. Then I add four horror prose tales, three of which are NEW. All this behind a great cover by my Art Sherpa, Trevor Erick Hawkins, over 300 pages of terror and history for only $19.95 in paperback, $2.99 in e-book (FREE if you belong to Amazon Prime).

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