Well, I did it! I just got back from dropping my manuscript (Skytrain Series #1, The Brigand) at the post office. Not ‘drop’ really, more like handed over with the formal air of placing a crown on someone’s head. The girl behind the desk must have sensed the importance of the occasion, because she seemed to handle the transaction with a bit more elan than I remember from past forays to ship packages. I suppose it’s entirely possible she saw my husband and me through the glass door as he took a picture of me standing in front of the UPS Store with my manuscript cradled in my arms. It was his idea to take the pictures, starting last night when he took a picture of me standing next to the 30-pound pile of paper I’d just printed out. (Or rather, the “thirty-pound pile of paper”, since one of the things I discovered about formatting a manuscript — that I didn’t know before — was that numbers under 100 should be spelled out, whereas numbers over 100 should be rendered in numerals. Not quite sure where the actual number 100 falls.)
I wonder if J.K. Rowling or the great Alice Mary Norton (otherwise known as Andre Norton) treated their first submission with such solemnity, or if they would smile (snicker?) at the care with which I packed it into its box. I packed it twice, the second time taking greater pains to make sure the pages wouldn’t shift in transit. I chose to ship first class instead of the cheaper, slower media rate, since I’m apparently in a hurry to receive my first rejection letter. I would actually have preferred UPS, since their tracking capabilities would let me see exactly when it got there, but none of the publisher’s guidelines mentioned UPS as an option, and at this point I’m terrified of committing some kind of faux pas that would cause an editor to chuck my baby into the round file!
The publisher I chose for this first try, DAW Books, is one of the few that asks for the complete manuscript up front and promises to read every one. Not only do I feel that gives me the best chance, but it also gives me a little breathing space before trying again, since they won’t accept simultaneous submissions to other publishers.
One of my first lessons on this journey was what a ‘simultaneous submission’ is. The 2013 Writer’s Market was somewhat vague on the concept, no doubt making the assumption that everyone already knows what it is. I suppose it could be intuitively obvious that it means you shouldn’t try to interest more than one publisher at a time in your manuscript, but I reasoned that it could also mean you shouldn’t submit more than one book at the same time to the same publisher. As it turned out, it was the former definition, and I certainly see where it would be annoying to an editor to take the time to read and evaluate a manuscript, only to find out that another publisher had snapped up the manuscript already.
It’s been a fascinating experience up to now, learning about how to format a manuscript and find a publisher. I thought I was fairly knowledgeable in the area of literature, but it turns out I’m sadly out of date! Tune in for more on my continuing education in future posts!
SandyWierman 