Submission

July 1, 2009 on 11:28 am | In Elise, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Okay, don’t go all gutter-minded on me. Well, you can, I won’t mind, but that’s not the point here.

Today I’m going to talk a little about the submission process.  I’m thinking about this for a few reasons. First, I’m thinking about it because there’s been a big brouhaha stink over RWA and where e-pubs stand in the organization. Second, I just subbed a piece. I’m going to talk about this in first person simply because it’s easier, not because I’m the grand-high-poobah of submissions. I’m not. It’s just my take. Feel free to disagree – that’s what comments are for.

Now, the first thing – the RWA thing – may not seem immediately related to submissions, but it is. And the second one, well that is obvious.

In any case, when I finish a project, I have to decide what to do with the thing. Sometimes this is obvious – if I’ve written a piece specifically for a contest, or with a specific goal in mind (say, an episode of Mercy on the site), then the immediate market is evident. But for the vast majority of projects, the immediate destination is not so clear. I have options. I can query agents, I can slush-pile submit (submit without agent) to whatever print markets might take the story, I can submit to magazines (depending on the content and length), or I can submit to any of a number of e-publishers. Me, personally? I can’t be bothered with the annoyance of doing print submissions, I can’t be bothered with the process of finding an agent. It just isn’t high on my list of priorities (and, by the way, I’m pretty atypical in this respect). I prefer e-publishers. So, I hunt around, see if the story seems to be a better fit to one place than another (for example, how does it fit in terms of  word-count or heat level or genre?). If I think its a good fit for a certain publisher, that’s going to be my first option. I’ve done some that are so short there are only one or two options – a handful of e-pubs or anthologies, contests, free reads on the site. In those situations, I weigh my options and make my choice. My choice. And that’s where I have an issue with RWA saying that only publishers of a certain type are “recognized” publishers. This essentially invalidates my choice as an author. That’s annoying. Which is why I don’t pay them dues.

But, back to the subject at hand. So, I decide I’m going to submit to John Doe’s Book Emporium E-publishing and Brewhouse (I totally made that up. If there is such a thing, I don’t know that I’d be in a hurry to submit to them. I’d worry about the blood alcohol levels of the publisher and editors). The first thing to do – part of the process of deciding on John Doe – is to look at their submission guidelines. Do they have a preferred font or font size? Preferred spacing or margins? Do they prefer an em-dash or double hyphens? All of these small things make a big difference. So, I go through to make any formatting changes that are necessary to get the manuscript into their preferred format. Some e-publishers prefer that you name the file in a certain way, so I might need to save a version in the new file name. Most e-publishers want you to include your name, a pen name if  you are using it, a mailing address, a phone number and an e-mail address somewhere on the manuscript. The submission guidelines tell you where. Once all of that technical mumbo-jumbo is out of the way, it’s a question of the front content.

What do I mean by that? I mean the blurb, the synopsis, an author bio if they ask for one, the cover letter. This is, for me, one of the most frustrating and difficult parts of the entire writing process. I do pretty well with blurbs. I hate synopses. They are a necessary evil that I hate with a passion. I don’t know many writers who LIKE writing synopses. Those that do – well, I have my suspicions. But, writing the synopsis must be done, and there is no help for it. Even if you are doing in-house submissions, you are likely to have to do synopses. There are any number of guides to writing cover letters and synopses.  Some of them are even good.  But what it comes down to is capturing the essence of my story in a 2-6 page summary. That’s incredibly difficult. I just spent  a good deal of time and effort creating this thing and putting all the depth and interest I could into it, and now I’m supposed to smash that down like so much garbage in a Wall-E unit? Hard.

After I crush my darling manuscript down to a puny, pale reflection of itself, I put the package together – cover letter, blurb, synopsis, story – and submit per the guidelines of the particular e-publisher to the e-mail address they tell me to use.  Keep in mind that a number of publishers are not fond of concurrent submissions (that is, having your manuscript submitted to multiple publishers at the same time).

Then the waiting begins. Cue the Jeopardy music. Some lines are fairly quick getting back to you – a few weeks to a couple of months. But some lines make you wait for six months. Ouch. Followed by the bigger ouch – the Rejection. We all get them (okay, maybe Nora Roberts isn’t getting rejections, but most everyone else is). If you are good and lucky (it takes both), you could be accepted, in which case, welcome to the wonderful world of edits. Otherwise, it’s on to the next option in the publishing list. Rinse, repeat.

It can become tedious, but it’s also rewarding in and of itself.  How so? Oh, well, the process itself shows that you have actually completed a manuscript – a difficult task on its own. It also keeps you grounded and forces you, as an author, to face things about yourself (impatience, insecurity, pride, fear). It’s a good tool, but a harsh one.

So, go ahead. Submit. As with the other kind off submission (okay, I went there), it has risks and rewards. Make your bet, spin the wheel.

Go on. You know you want to.