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PRESENTATION OF YOUR WORK

PROFESSIONAL PRESENTATION DOES COUNT!

It's a tough race out there. Make sure you don't fall at the first hurdle.

If your manuscript arrives on my desk badly formatted, I know for a fact you haven't read this page, or any other guide to getting published - you haven't done your research. First black mark, before I even start to read: will this author be a good experience to work with, if they can't be bothered to learn their trade? Probably not.

If attending an interview for a job it's a fact that your appearance is the first thing to impress on the interviewer the way you will probably work. Sloppy dress most likely = sloppy attitude. If you are also unable to answer the most basic questions about the job you're applying for, that shows your interest levels and thus how much reliability can be expected from you.

Sending in a manuscript is a job application. The publishing industry has certain basic requirements and standards because through the centuries certain methods have developed that need certain conditions in which to best operate - i.e. there are good reasons for what we ask you to do before sending in your work, which will make us feel better about having to read your ms and will also make our job easier. If you are truly in love with the idea of writing to get published, you'll have spent some time learning about the craft of writing - including finding out how to present your work so that the agent/reader/editor will pick it up, immediately notice it's professionally done, and award you brownie points before he/she even starts to read.

So what do we ask of you? - That you try to follow just a few simple rules, which will make reading your work a pleasure, not a grind:

HARD COPY OR EMAILED FILE? - Please do send in hard copy if you at all can! We also accept emailed files, but your work may take longer for us to read (it's harder to read manuscripts on a computer screen, and we'll by preference be reading a hard copy ms while eating our breakfast, walking the dog, visiting the aged, checking in with our probation officers, etc!) (Kidding. I'm kidding! About the probation officer. Not the hard copy.)

STAMPED ADDRESSED ENVELOPE: Note that the post office does not accept COD parcels; all postage has to be paid up front nowadays. If you want us to return your manuscript, we cannot accept the costs for doing this. Therefore you need to include a big envelope, large enough for the manuscript etc, already stamped with the correct postage, and addressed with your own address on the front. To yourself, in other words. If you do not include a (properly stamped!) SAE, then the papers will be recycled in whatever way we feel most appropriate.

If you have submitted an already-printed book, and don't include an SAE, we have a policy of donating such books to a charitable book club in which the readers make a financial contribution each time they take out a book, and that money goes to the charity of that year's nomination. If you don't wish this to be done with your book (though we think it's good publicity for you), please ensure you send an SAE, or make a specific request in your covering letter for how you would prefer your book to be disposed of.

COVERING LETTER: Even if we have asked by email for your submission, please ALWAYS include a covering letter. We have received manuscripts in the post that have simply had a synopsis and first chapters, and maybe an SAE - from which we had to figure out who had sent the manuscript, and traipse back through emails to make the connection. Please don't try our sense of humour this way; it bodes unwell for our reading of your submission. :-) We receive a great number of queries and a great number of manuscripts; take it from me - we probably don't remember asking for the manuscript, and certainly won't know who it's from or why it's clogging up our mailbox. Remind us.

What is a covering letter? A covering letter should include a paragraph about your manuscript, a paragraph about yourself and what you envisage for your writing path/career, and a paragraph that demonstrates that you've understood what part you will have to play in making your book a success (see the rest of this web site for clues!). In other words, we want to know briefly about the work, a bit more about who you are and what your writing or other background entails, and a bit about your plans for publicity/marketing, if any.

LINE SPACING: Only the covering letter and synopsis should be single spaced; the manuscript itself should be double-spaced, or at very least 1.5 ... please don't send single-spaced manuscripts, even if the paragraphs themselves have double spaces between them. It makes reading hard on the eyes and brain, and we're more likely to take long breaks from it, so you're holding up the process of getting your ms read.

SINGLE-SIDED PRINT: Please only print on one side of the paper, no matter how tempting it is to save money. If you really really have to print both sides, please tell us why in your covering letter. We understand poverty; it's slovenliness we don't understand.

FONT AND FONT SIZE: Use a plain, serif typeface like Times New Roman or Book Antiqua or similar; it's proven to be easier on the eye and brain during long reading sessions. 12-point is easiest on the eyes. Please, not too big and not too small. 12 is good. We like 12. We like 12 point Times New Roman; it also helps us quickly assess the size of the final book.

MARGINS: Set up your page margins to be at least one full inch all around. If we are enthusiastic about your manuscript, we will find ourselves making rabid notes in the margins, or even starting to make edits or proofing marks. We can't help ourselves sometimes! - so we need the space for our little foibles. (Of course, we only do this on manuscripts we think we'll pursue, or those that have not been sent with a stamped self-addressed envelope and are therefore not expected back by the author.)

JUSTIFICATION: Please do not right-justify your work. We like it left-justified with a ragged right margin.

HEADERS AND FOOTERS: We like 'em. Doesn't really matter which way you do them - left, right, or both - but here's one clear way that works for us at least: on the left, your name, and on the right, the book title (or vice versa). Your footer should contain, at bottom right, the page number, plain and simple. Alternatively, put the title / your name / page number, all in the header OR footer, to one side or the other. But most publishers do like to see all three somewhere on the page (eg for times like when the llama gets into the manuscript shelves. It's easier to put the right pages back together afterwards).

PROPOSAL: Not necessary except for serious non-fiction. Yes, we do enjoy it when we receive a manuscript accompanied by a full professional proposal, telling us about the market and target audience and comparison books and statistics etc etc, but we also know how burdensome this can be to new writers who actually haven't a clue how to find all this out on the whole and are terrified of getting it wrong. So: we don't ask you for a full-out research paper with your manuscript. We want just three things: A cover page, a synopsis, and the book - as below.

COVER SHEET: This doesn't need headers or footers, it just needs the title about a third to half way down the page, your author name beneath that, and then at bottom (or top) left your contact details. Word count should appear too, preferably at top right of the page. Positioning of these items on the page is not that important - getting them all on, is. And if you have an agent, the agent contact details should appear instead of yours, or as well as yours on the opposite side of the page. If you include an agent contact we'll probably contact them before we contact you, so be sure that's what you want before including their details.

SYNOPSIS: Fiction: We are happy with a 1-2 page synopsis, but if you want to go to 4 or 5 pages that's also fine. It's good for us to get an overall idea of the book - beginning, middle and most importantly end (please don't be coy; we need to know!) - but remember that our main interest is the book itself. We need to see an overview, but not a blow by blow, chapter by chapter account. The book will do that for us.

SYNOPSIS/PROPOSAL: Non-Fiction: We would like to see a more in-depth proposal for non-fiction than we require for fiction. If you don't know what this means, please do a search on the internet, get yourself a boilerplate non-fiction proposal, and take it from there. But please don't blind us with science or statistics; we hate numbers. We just want to know that you believe there's a market out there, and you have a good idea of where and what it is and how to approach it.

MANUSCRIPT: If we have asked you for just a few chapters, please only send those few chapters. If we have asked for the whole book, please send the whole book.

LAST PAGE: Please make some sort of indication that we have reached the end. With some books, it's been hard to tell.

OUR PET HATES: Please do not send in a manuscript in fancy typefaces, or all in bold, or large print, or with narrow margins, or single spaced with block paragraphs and gaps between them, or worse still printed on both sides of the paper, or without headers and page numbers, or without a cover sheet with your title, author name, word count, and contact details ... you're shouting out that you haven't bothered to find out the correct way to do this. It isn't difficult, and it doesn't have to be exact - just stick to a few basic rules that cover the requirements of most publishers.

Thank you! Now, if you're read all the other pages on this web site and think you know what we're looking for - send in your query! :-)