Getting ready to submit your work
It is important to think hard about whether your manuscript is ready
for submission before you start on the usually lengthy and often dispiriting
business of submitting your work to agents and publishers. Do as many
drafts as necessary to make sure that it is in the best possible shape. Work
on the structure, plot, characters and dialogue.
Think about who you are writing for and what the market for your book
will be. Study what is in the bookshops to make sure that you are
writing for an existing market. There’s no point in producing a western, for
instance, as the market for them vanished years ago and publishers will
therefore not take yours on, however good it is. Read widely to see what
published authors are up to and try to analyse what they are doing and why
it works.
If you can join a writing group or go on a creative writing course, then
you will learn from other writers and receive invaluable criticism of your
work. If this is not for you, then there are a large number of books on the
market which will help you hone your skills (see our
WritersBookstall for a categorised
selection).
Keep up with what’s going on in the publishing world. This website
has a weekly update of news of
interest to writers. Don’t feel that you are somehow not affected, that you
in another world set apart from the commercial strictures. If you want
your book published then you have to take account of what readers want and
understand what is happening in the book trade. Remember, it is a
trade not a subsidised service. Just because you have written a
manuscript doesn’t in itself entitle you to get it published.
Understand that writing is a craft requiring a range of skills which
very few writers are born with. Most published authors have had to work
to develop their writing, doing draft after draft and sometimes putting
manuscripts on one side because they cannot get them right or no-one wants
to publish them.
The highly successful novelist William Boyd recently said: 'My debut
novel was actually my fourth novel. I often say to young writers who
have written a novel and can't get it published, "well, write another".'
When you’ve done the best you can with your manuscript, try to get it
critiqued. Friends and family are not really much help here. Not only do
they rarely possess any editorial skills, but they are unlikely to find it
easy to be critical about your manuscript when they know you have lavished
your time and energies on it. If you can afford it, get a paid critique
from a reputable service such as WritersServices.
Writers need that detached professional advice, as they are often much
too close to their work to know what’s right and what's wrong with it, and
don’t possess the critical skills to sort it out on their own. Many of
the authors who come to WritersServices come back repeatedly, usually to the
same editor, until they have improved their work in successive drafts using
professional guidance to make sure it is ready for submission.
Finding an agent
Making submissions
Avoiding rejection
Dealing with
Rejection
