# Writing From A Publishers View



## kitreshawn (Aug 30, 2008)

While I was in College I did some work as an editor (work study thing).  It was nothing fancy, just a college thing that would publish a collection of short stories about once a semester.  That said it did give me a chance to see things from the Publisher's perspective and I did get to talk with a couple professional editors.

I have the impression that the way things were run at where I worked were somewhat old fashion and I am willing to bet each publisher has its own way of doing things.  That said I figure that posting this will give people an idea of how things tend to work.


1) Submission Guidelines.

First thing is first, submission guidelines.  Follow them.  This seems simple but you would be surprised how often I saw things that violated the guidelines.  For example where I worked it was expected that every story would have 1 inch margins all around, double space, 12 point font, printed on one side of the page only.  The first page should have contained the Artist's full name, pen name (if any) below it, and address and other contact info below that.  On every page after there should be a page number and the artist's name in the upper margin.  First page should also include an estimate (rounded to the nearest hundred) of words in the story and the title.  We also expected a cover sheet that had a paragraph or two describing the story, genre, and so forth.

Submissions that did not follow these guidelines were thrown out without being looked at.  Simply put we had so much to look over there was not time to deal with anyone who could not follow simple instructions.  So read submission guidelines and follow them to the letter.

Talking to professional editors I also found that for some manuscripts people would describe the rights they were offering to sale.  For books DO NOT do this.  Apparently with books rights are negotiated after the book is accepted and the editor invited you over to negotiate a contract (I wish I could say more, but all of that is second hand and as far as I know).

As far as short stories go, leave out such touches as "For Sale" or "Usual Rights - Usual Rates" or anything similar.  These are assumed and only make the editor realize you are an amateur.  Unless you specify different rights those two things are simply assumed.


2) Process of acceptance

In addition to me we had 2 other editors that were students (we each worked 20 hours a week, the maximum allowed for Work Study) and one Head Editor (a college staffer).  Each of the student editors got a stack of submissions to go over, picking the ones that were the best.

Theoretically we read every submission to completion but practice was different.  In addition to this story thing we also helped with the news paper and such, and with classes there just was not enough time to read everything critically to completion.  So the process ended up being as follows:

Pick a submission and start to read the first page.  The author has exactly 1 page to convince me that the story is worth further consideration (truthfully this is really only a paragraph or two in most cases.  This is importaint to keep in mind as most readers end up the same way).  If after the first page I find myself interested I put it in the "maybe" pile to be considered more fully at a later time.  If I am not interested it gets rejected and a stock rejection letter.

Once you have a modest number of stories in the maybe pile you read each of those to completion.  Again most of these end up in the rejected pile for various reasons ranging from content, poor ending, poor editing, or simply not what we are looking for.  Most of these too get stock rejection letters.  The stories that survive this second review are then reviewed a third time in depth by another student editor and if they pass muster (roughly 50-66% of those do) they are passed up to the senior editor (who generally kept most of what got to him... probably 80%-90%).

Very rarely there would be a story that you would start to read and find yourself at the end before you knew it.  Generally this one ended up getting priority over all other submissions and would ultimately find itself on the Senior Editor's desk by the end of the day.  This happened maybe... once per couple hundred or so submissions.

Point is simply that as editors we did not have time to consider everything fully so we needed to come up with a way to remove things that obviously needed a lot of work or were just poorly written early on (thus the first review).  With that done we then went over more carefully to make sure nothing objectionable slipped through and to ensure that the whole story was up to about the same standard (some people write wonderful beginnings then fall on their face).  The third review was to ensure that it was not personal bias that for some reason moved the story up (If you like sci-fi you tend to prefer those to other stories for example).  Finally the senior editor got the final look because, after all, we were just students.

Sometimes a story would not end up making the grade but still stood out in some way.  These ended up getting rejection letters written especially for them.  Sometimes it was just a matter of it was not what we were looking for, other times it was lack of space.  It was also possible that it barely failed to meet our standards.  While these "personalized rejections" were not much longer they generally did have a couple comments specifically to why the story was rejected.  If you end up getting something like this you should be encouraged because it means your story was good enough to cause the editor to seriously consider it.


3) Things to avoid

Proof-read your stuff.  We might have been editors but if anyone did not show enough interest in their own story to make sure punctuation, grammar, and spelling were free from surface flaws we did not care enough to do more than throw the thing in the trash.

Generally do not query about if a story from you would be accepted.  Unless you are a household name the answer is there is no way to tell.  By all means ask if submissions are being accepted (though they nearly always are) but that is about as far as you should go.  Submit a work you consider completed for review.  Overviews are not sufficient to determine if your writing style is what is being looked for.  Likewise when doing a book it is not acceptable to submit several chapters and an overview of the rest.  When starting out go all or nothing.

Seasonal stories need to be submitted around 5 months in advance in my experience.  Do not write a Christmas story or send it in December (or even November) and expect to see it appear in anything.  The review process takes time and 2 months is simply not enough.  Decisions are very slow in coming, but if my experience is anything typical than editor staffs are very small.

Finally stay the heck away from the editor offices unless invited.  Don't send needless messages either as that takes away from the work being done.  If your work is interesting to the editor they WILL contact you on their own.


4) Second Hand Information

This is stuff I learned second hand from professional editors while working with the work study:

Stay away from vanity publishers.  When I say "vanity publisher" I mean publishing groups that make you pay for publishing your own document.  The reason is these groups prey on your vanity to see your work in print no matter what the cost.  A traditional publisher invests their own money in getting your story ready for print, and thus has incentive to make sure it sells well.  A vanity publisher, having gotten you to pay to print the book with your own money, has no such incentive.  In fact they rarely have any sales staff and the author must find some way to promote his own book.  Simply put DO NOT invest your own money in publishing something.  Odds of it being a success are strongly against you.

Stories submitted to magazines for serial publication will likely need to have significant portions cut.  The example I got was a story that ran for around 40,000 words.  The magazine was willing to accept the story but wanted it at 10 total 'chapters' no longer than 2,000 words each.  This meant a cut of 20,000 words.  Such a thing is unavoidable so be prepared and get very good at it if this is your plan.

Don't get discouraged by suggested revisions.  Often when editors find something they really like but do not think it is quite ready they may send a huge list of revisions back.  The best way to handle this is to give yourself a couple of weeks to consider the revisions that are suggested.  There is nothing wrong with making them as everyone has some blind spots that need to be pointed out by others.  There is nothing forcing you to do the revisions, but refusing to do so will also result in a refusal to publish you.  That said when doing the revisions do them in a way that you feel is consistent with your story, and don't feel you have to stick perfectly to every one suggested.  The couple week waiting period before starting on revisions is so you can get over the initial "trauma" of being told you need to make yet more changes and so you can better consider why the suggestions were made and how to fill the expectations the editors are expressing.

Do not get discouraged by rejections.  Sometimes a rejection is because you are outside the what that particular publisher "does".  A little research can help with that, but if you get a rejection on a story try submitting it to a different publisher.  Rejection does not always mean bad, it can just mean not what is being looked for at the time.  This is especially true if you get a letter that looks non-stock.


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## Shouden (Aug 30, 2008)

Lots of good tips, kitreshawn. Having already published a book myself, this seems pretty much spot on. I got published through PublishAmerica, which is actually a great place to get start out with, but not a publisher you want to stick with if you want to make it big. PA is designed to cater to the beginning authors. They will point out some errors, but make sure you fully proof read your work before you submit it to them. Their editors aren't going to do a lot of it for you. This is good practice for the first-time author.

I will probably publish another book or two through them to get the editing and feel down but, I will be looking to pull away from them soon. I do plan on re-editing my first book and getting it re-published somewhere else when my contract runs out.

Also, one thing a lot of authors and publishers encouraged was, after getting published, to set up book signings. From what I hear, most places are willing to do them because it gets people to come into the store. (I still have yet to schedule one. It's on my to-do list though.)

Anyways, great advice, kitreshawn.


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## Poetigress (Aug 30, 2008)

Shouden said:


> I got published through PublishAmerica, which is actually a great place to get start out with,



Um, sorry, but no.  It's not a good place for anyone, beginning or otherwise.  Scroll down to their listing here for a start:

http://anotherealm.com/prededitors/pebp.htm

PublishAmerica is actually one of the most well-known vanity publishers, and whenever it comes up on writing sites, the discussion isn't good.  (SFWA's Writer Beware says they've received over 100 complaints about PA over the last few years.)  I can appreciate that you might have had a good experience with them, but I would never personally recommend them to anyone based on their history.  

Kitreshawn -- good stuff.  That's how it's been in my experience as well.


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## kitreshawn (Aug 30, 2008)

I am not sure if Publish America qualifies in the way that I use "Vanity Publisher" as I was speaking specifically about places that make you pay your own money to get published.  It sounds more Print-On-Demand which has much the same reputation as far as quality goes (basically not very good) but isn't quite what I would consider a Vanity Publisher from my perspective.

That said I have heard a lot about Publish America.  What I do know is that the BBB kicked it out in early 2005, however three months or so later it was permitted to rejoin.

Here is (one) list of publishers that is available online.

http://anotherealm.com/prededitors/pebp.htm


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## foozzzball (Aug 30, 2008)

Not going to touch the PA thing, but I will say I had a buddy who vanity published. Out and out registered his own company for the publishers and hired himself a line editor and the works. He was very 'Oh I would love to know your opinion' and stuff on and on and for awhile I just wanted to say, 'fine, you want me to read it? Send me a copy', bu t I didn't. I bought a copy. I read it. And afterward I really wanted to pick up a red pen and scribble furiously on it and mail it to him with a request for my money back. (He's currently on the third of the series? I don't know, I stopped paying attention.)

Then again I've had that experience with a lot of books out of big name houses - the latest was out of _Bloomsbury_ - so sometimes I do find myself wondering what mechanisms of bribery an agent uses, since they always appear prominently in the 'thanks' page when this happens... an agent, or a writing group. One of the two. Sometimes a workshop course.


Anyway. I would add to the above, research the publication/publishing house you're submitting to. Research it well. Read back issues/other novels they've put out, get an idea of who they publish, figure out if you really would like to tie your name to theirs and whether or not they can sell what you've written to their readership. Remember they're in the business of pushing words around and selling them, that's about it. Do not expect more out of a publisher/publication/whatever than you're actually going to get. It will lead you to heartbreak.


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## Shouden (Aug 30, 2008)

Yeah, after doing some reading about PA, I will definitely be looking for a different publisher the next time i want to publish a book. But at least I have a book published (although, reading through it, I want to do a major overhaul of it.) but anyways, thanks again, people.


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## kitreshawn (Aug 31, 2008)

I just remembered another second hand thing:

With books (at least) NEVER submit the same piece to two publishers at the same time.  It is unlikely but it is possible that you could be accepted by 2 or more publishers.  The review process generally takes several months for something as long as a book so it is understandable that you would get impatient, however submitting to more than one publishing house is considered unethical by publishers.  Think of the embarassment of having to turn down one of the publishers that just accepted your submission.  You will have some explaining to do to at least one of the editors, probably both, and end up making an enemy.

That said it is acceptable to submit a manuscript to a book publisher and at the same time submit a copy to a magazine in an attempt to secure a serial possibility with a letter stating that the original is being considered by a book editor.  Apparently this is considered ethical as different rights are involved and you are permitted to sell them separately.  Honestly I do not understand it.  Just be sure to make it explicit that you are only offering "First Serial Rights ONLY" as a reminder.


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## Nargle (Aug 31, 2008)

Just curious... but... You can actually like.. sell books? Like.. they'll end up in Barnes & Noble? O.O

Really?

Or does publishing a book mean something else?

Excuse my ignorance, please ;.;


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## kitreshawn (Sep 1, 2008)

Publish merely means "Put into print".  However when writers talk about getting published they typically mean selling their writing to someone so it appears in some sort of medium.  Magazines and Books are the most common.  However, technically, posting something on the web is 'publishing' and so it is a bad idea to publicly post anything you are intending to sell.

Publishing in the way most people talk about it is generally done through Publishing Houses.  These are companies that will buy a manuscript from an author.  Typically there is some sort of advance (most books have an advance of a couple thousand dollars, the actual amount depends on how many copies the book is expected to sell).  In addition the author gets royalties for book sales.  Apparently 10% is considered average, however that can go down or up.  Most contracts also specify that after some period of time the amount of royalties the writer gets will drop more, or that the royalties will be lower for small printings, however this is still better for the author than having their book to go out of print.

Now, to answer your question (at least, what I think your question is), I am not a member of any publishing company.  I worked as an editor for a small college run publishing group, but it only dealt with the school newspaper plus any other things that happened to interest the head editor at the time (usually fiction contests for the students).


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## Nargle (Sep 1, 2008)

Wow, that's so cool =D I always figured a LOT more went into it!

Hehe, and no, I was more asking if it was possible then if you worked for a publishing company =3 I think I was too stunned by the simplicity of the process to even think of that XD


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## kitreshawn (Sep 1, 2008)

Well, our process was fairly simple, but again it was a simple publication group for a college campus.  We didn't do books or anything.  Those usually have review boards as I understand it that discuss in depth if a book should be accepted or rejected.  How each publishing house comes to the decision is different.


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## TakeWalker (Sep 1, 2008)

kitreshawn said:


> However, technically, posting something on the web is 'publishing' and so it is a bad idea to publicly post anything you are intending to sell.



This is a hell of a snafu, you know. How can one be expected to get feedback on their works?


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## M. LeRenard (Sep 1, 2008)

> This is a hell of a snafu, you know. How can one be expected to get feedback on their works?


Don't post it in a place accessible to the public.  Find a place where you need a membership to get and give critiques, like CritiqueCircle or one of those places.  Or just do it with people you know IRL.  As long as it's not open for everybody and his dog to see, you don't lose first rights to it, I think is how it works.


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## Shouden (Sep 1, 2008)

although, technically speaking, as soon as you write something down, it becomes legally copyrighted. But, it is always a good idea to protect your works nonetheless. Even if you have a registered copyright.


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## kitreshawn (Sep 2, 2008)

M. Le Renard said:


> Don't post it in a place accessible to the public.  Find a place where you need a membership to get and give critiques, like CritiqueCircle or one of those places.  Or just do it with people you know IRL.  As long as it's not open for everybody and his dog to see, you don't lose first rights to it, I think is how it works.



This is good advice.  Also, I will say that it seems places that publish pretty much anything in a furry venue are willing to consider publishing things that have already been published, assuming the rights are still available.  For example, Bad Dog Books.




Shouden said:


> although, technically speaking, as soon as you write something down, it becomes legally copyrighted. But, it is always a good idea to protect your works nonetheless. Even if you have a registered copyright.



There is a difference between copyrighted and published, Shouden.  The moment you write a story down it is copyrighted to you unless you sell those rights.  However Publishing Houses want the rights to make the first publishing run of the book.  If you have already posted your stuff in a public venue than you cannot sell the first publishing rights as it has already been published.  Since first publishing rights are pretty much the primary thing those groups are interested in the fact that they are already gone makes them not interested in your manuscript.  The story is still legally yours, however you won't be able to sell it to anyone.


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## Shouden (Sep 2, 2008)

I know, there is.....you know, what, I am not in the mood for an argument, so...just ignore my comment.


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## kitreshawn (Sep 2, 2008)

I probably misunderstood what you were saying.

And you are correct in saying it is best to take steps to protect your copyright.  Typically when some book series does take off a few people will come out of the woodwork and try to claim it was their idea and that the author stole it.

So keep all your notes and stuff, as this is the proof that you came up with the story and that you wrote it.  Also keep any rejection letters from trying to get published.  You can get more elaborate but honestly it is not worth all the trouble in most cases.


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## TakeWalker (Sep 2, 2008)

I guess I'm screwed then.

Is there any way to revoke first rights?


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## kitreshawn (Sep 2, 2008)

I wouldn't know about that.  Most of what I know is just things I have read or heard about second hand.  Like I said, most furry publishers seem to be willing to consider already published works, but beyond that you really need to talk to someone who knows more about the rights involved.

I will say you may be able to sell your writing as a serial publication if you already posted it online.  magazines can apparently be somewhat more lax about that sort of thing.


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## M. LeRenard (Sep 2, 2008)

> Is there any way to revoke first rights?


If you edit the work heavily enough before submitting it to publishing agencies, then the draft you posted on the internet is considered incomplete, so you retain first rights.  Somebody stop me if I'm saying something untrue, but I think that's the way it goes.
So if you've got something posted online (or are in the process of posting something online), just make sure you do a great deal of revision before you decide to start sending out query letters.


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