Adventures in Publishing

Crafting a Standout Submission

Pushing your wee book baby out into the world is hard, but finding someone who thinks it's just as beautiful as you do... that's often even harder.

What follows are some tips to help get your manuscript noticed when you pitch it to a publisher. There are already some great articles on writing query letters, but many of them apply to larger/traditional publishers. My aim with this article is to give you a peek into what it's like working in submissions for a tiny independent publisher, and what you can do to catch the eye of whoever's managing the – likely overflowing – submissions inbox.

Subject Line: Truth be told, a good subject line isn't going to make or break a submission. At least, not for me. I open everything. What a good subject line does achieve, however, is giving the publisher a sense of the author's skill in selling their story. This may come into play later on in the submission process – for instance, if your book is up against another book of similar quality, and the publisher considers which author they most want to work with.

Tag Line: This ties in with having a good subject line. It's not necessary, but a good tag line shows the publisher that you've thought about how to market your book. It might also give the publisher a sense of how they might market your book. Beyond marketing, the tag line will ideally capture the imagination of whoever is reading your pitch, and compel them to keep reading.

Greeting: Whatever you do, don't start with "Dear Sirs..." (to see what I'm referring to, do an Internet search for "Tramp Press" and "Dear Sirs"). Many small publishers are so overworked that something as simple as an annoying greeting can be enough to land your query in the bin. (I've never deleted a submission based on the greeting, but I've certainly sighed over my share of "Dear Sirs" e-mails.) If you can, it's worth finding out who'll be receiving your message, and addressing it to them.

Synopsis: A lot of publishers place word limits on these, but not all of them do. When I was doing submissions, I didn't care if a synopsis was 300 words or 3000, as long as it was well written and gave me a good sense of the storyline. That said, for the sake of the person reading your submission, I'd recommend keeping it as concise as possible – and spoil everything.

So many synopses I've read refer to "crazy twists" without specifying what happens. This is fine for a back cover blurb, but not for a publisher who is short on time. Lay out the key plot points in detail. Alluding to important plot points rather than detailing them is more likely to annoy than inspire. (On the topic of twists, avoid using clichéd language to describe your book. "A romance with a twist" or "Classic crime story with a twist" might accurately describe your novel, but I can say from experience that "with a twist" starts to sound pretty unexciting after one has received several queries in a row using the same phrase.)

Now, to be completely transparent, when processing submissions I often skip the synopsis and go straight to the manuscript. After reading several pages I can generally get a sense of the story and writing style, and if I'm still interested after that, I'll read the synopsis.

The Manuscript: A good story goes a long way, but for a literary publisher at least, your writing style is nearly as important. If your story is strong but you struggle with style, consider working with an editor before sending out queries. I've had to reject some truly interesting stories because the writing would have required too much editing to bring the book in line with the publisher's style, and we simply didn't have the resources to devote to it.

Additional Considerations: With a small publisher a key consideration is often (if not always) going to be, "How many resources will this consume?" I've worked with publishers who took a chance on "unsellable" experimental books because a) they saw cultural value in them and b) the books demanded few resources. Conversely, I've seen small publishers reluctantly pass up interesting and worthwhile books because they simply couldn't afford to allocate the resources required to bringing those manuscripts to publication (this is particularly true with translated literature as, in addition to the regular publishing costs, translation can (rightfully) cost thousands of pounds).