Finding Authors, Developing Projects

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"Can you tell me how you find manuscripts to publish?" That's a common question in this business.

Last week I had an interesting conversation with an non-fiction acquisitions editor who works for a sizable house on the East coast. She voiced concern about a lack of good material. "It's flooding in," she explained, "but by and large it is so poorly written I can't stand to read it, or it has been published a hundred times before." I acknowledged her pain, we conversed a bit longer, and I hung up.

Where do we get our manuscripts? The material keeps coming in, but where does it come from? How does it end up on the accepted/contracted list?

In the vast majority of cases, manuscripts that make the accepted/contracted list follow one of four avenues. Here is how I view this process from inside Savas Beatie:

1) UNSOLICITED: Complete manuscripts, partial manuscripts, or query letters arrive via email at editorial@savasbeatie.com, or reach us through snail mail;

2) DEVELOPED: We see a need in a particular space, and seek out material through a variety of means.

3) FOLLOW-UP: We work with an author, enjoy the process, publish a book, and develop new material with him/her.

4) NETWORKED: One of our authors recommends a friend's / acquaintance's work, and either we follow up or we ask the author to follow up on our behalf.

If you are a writer and desire to publish a book, ideally you want to find yourself sitting at either Number 3 or Number 4. The former is the four-lane freeway to publication with Savas Beatie, and it moves at 75 mph; the latter is a two-lane sidestreet that moves a bit faster than normal traffic patterns.

The first option is the congested on-ramp leading to the freeway. There are at least three accidents along that glide path, emergency vehicles blocking the way, a flooded water main, and bumper-to-bumper traffic. Regardless of the difficulties facing you along that route, nearly everyone has to find a way to avoid and overcome those obstacles at some point in their writing career/avocation just to get a glimpse of the four-lane freeway ahead--which is moving fast with a lot of traffic.

Number two is a unique animal unto itself. (More on that later.)

As I have expressed before on this blog, authors who do not follow guidelines for submission or come across distastefully to the person most likely to accept their work will find it sleeping with the fishes.

My next several posts will discuss each of these options, and how we work them. I think potential authors will find it interesting, and hopefully useful.

--tps

The Manuscript Process (Part 3)

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A small detour in our ongoing discussion. . . As the managing director and acquisitions editor for Savas Beatie, I do my best to evaluate both content and author. Both are important. Sometimes an evaluation tool I use is how authors respond to my suggestions via a rejection letter.

For example, occasionally we get manuscripts we can't use, but I know agents or other editors/houses who might want to see them. So when I reject the query/manuscript, I pass along a suggestion to the author to consider posting comments on our blogs (and others) pertinent to the post topic of the day, and discuss their own situation and manuscript. I also always offer a tip or suggestion that might help them.

Why do I do this? Because you never know who is watching. And as I tell them, agents, other bloggers, other publishers, other editors, et. al., track my blog.

I like to see which authors even take the time to say " thank you" or acknowledge this with a reply (about one-third do, which means the other two-thirds are essentially brain dead when it comes to manners and seeing past square one), and which authors take the time to post a pertinent comment that might help them.

Question: What does this tell me?

Answer: That I likely made the right decision to turn down their manuscript and reject them as authors.

If an author can't follow simply suggestions that will help him or her potentially get published, why would I want them as a Savas Beatie author? There is a reason for everything we do here--even in rejection-suggestions.

Another quick example: We had a full length manuscript biography of a Civil War general cross our desk (I requested to see it). I sent it out to a reader, paid a few bucks to have it read, and he evaluated it pretty carefully. Generally he liked it as a first cut, but had some very straight-up criticism for the author on how it had to be improved before we should accept it (more tactical battle detail, more analysis, and so forth). Tough, fair, and honest. No BS. And we know the market.

I took the time to put all this into an email and send it to the author. It was a long, careful, email.

Guess what? The author did not take the time to even reply. Obviously it was not what he wanted to hear, so he handled it by  . . . not handling it. And by doing so, he told me much about what it would be like to deal with him after the contract is signed.I saw the book a few months later being announced by another publisher who takes almost everything, edits almost nothing, prices their books sky high, and markets into a very narrow niche. What a mistake.

Authors take heed: There is a reason for everything we do here (and this is true in most credible publishing houses). How you handle your end may determine whether you get your work published. Publishing is a very, very small world.

Word travels fast.

--tps

The Manuscript Submission Process, Pt. 2

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(For Part 1, click here)

Don't be a Submissionist. (More on that later.)

We receive submissions like the following routinely: A large envelope (priority mail or sometime overnight) offering several graphic novels for publication, or a traditional work of fiction, or a history of the Congo, or how to breed and make money on designer dogs (no, I am not making this up).

I have nothing against graphic novels (but have never read one and likely never will), good fiction (which  I occasionally read), the Congo (one of my favorite places to visit). But I don't like designer dogs.

Getting these in the mail irks me even more than waking up in the morning to discover I am out of cream for my coffee. (And I like my coffee in the morning while I shave and ponder the day.) Even a cursory examination of our list of titles makes it vibrantly evident that Savas Beatie does not publish graphic novels, fiction, books on Africa, or dogs. These "Submissionists" (doesn't that sound deliciously dark?) expended time (say 30 minutes) and money (say $10 for the postage, certified return receipt, interior binding, paper, ink, etc.) to submit a manuscript to a company that does not even publish (or dabble in) their genre. He wasted his own time, and the time of my staff to handle them, and me to look at them right before I drop them into the bin that my son empties each weekend into the shredder.

Which leads me to reiterate a couple common sense rules to follow. Many authors pay too little attention to both of them when submitting manuscripts. A few minutes well spent will save you copious amounts of time and energy, and keep acquisition editors from pulling their hair out.

RULE NUMBER ONE: As obvious as it seems, make sure the books produced by the publishing house and the manuscript you are submitting actually have something in common. A completely unrelated query communicates a lot of information, none of it flattering for the Submissionist. It tells me the author (or agent) did not research our company and list. It also means he/she/agent is using the "shotgun" approach to getting published--i.e., send out as many queries to as many publishers as possible in the hope that one will stick.

Would you interview for a job with a company you know nothing about? Would you tell your interviewer you are knocking on every door in every building and up and down the street, ready to take the first offer someone makes? Of course not. But that is exactly what an unsolicited submission in a genre we don't publish tells us. You are willing to waste our time, which is already sorely constrained, to pitch a book we likely would not publish regardless of how well it is written.

Credible publishing houses receive a slew of manuscripts and queries (we get several each day from around the world). The first ones tossed into the round file are those that do not match what we publish. If it has a return envelope, we bundle and return. If it has a SASE, I write NO in big bold letters and drop the envelope into the post box.

And RULE NUMBER TWO: Click here and read Part 1 of this series.

There is a reason for a submission process. Ignore it at your peril.

Don't be a Submissionist.

--tps

How to Write Good, by Frank L. Visco

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This is at least a cousin of the "How to submit a manuscript" story line
 currently occupying my attention. And hopefully yours. Happy chuckle.

How to Write Good, by Frank L. Visco

          1. Avoid alliteration. Always.

          2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.

          3. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.)

          4. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.

          5. One should never generalize.

          6. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.

          7. Be more or less specific.

          8. Sentence fragments? Eliminate.

          9. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

          10 Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.

          11. Who needs rhetorical questions?

Getting Published--A Refresher Course. Pt. 1

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Every publishing company has its own way of doing things, and we are no different.

At Savas Beatie, we have always been careful about how we select manuscripts for publication, and as I have written, we are blessed with stacks of publishable manuscripts. Back in 2008 when I began this blog we were receiving  about one query a day. As of this writing, that number has jumped to about four.

But dusting the chaff from the grain is not always easy. Out of that trio of submissions, one will be fiction (it says clearly on our website that we do NOT publish fiction), one will be in area we do not publish ("Sharks Can be Sexy, too"), and the third and fourth will be something in our area of expertise and interest. But two a day is fourteen a week, or sixty or so a month and  . . .you can do the math. That means, generally speaking, for every twenty or so potentially manuscripts we get in, we will publish . . .  one. (The real number is lower, because many books are ideas we develop ourselves and seek authors to help us with.)

The process of acceptance is of interest to most authors, and rightly so. Sometimes authors inadvertently make the decision for us, without realizing it.

Of course, the genre, topic, research depth, and writing skills are important. But what most authors do not realize is that for many presses, acquisition editors (at Savas Beatie, I wear that hat) sometimes employ a process akin to alchemy. Call it a gut feeling, call it reading tea leaves, call it learning the hard way, but over the years I have come to understand that if the genre is what we publish and the topic is right, research can be improved and writing can be cleaned up. But unlike fixing commas, rewriting clunky sentence structure, or digging into an overlooked archive, authors--like leopards--don't change their spots. They are who they are. They have their idea on how the process works, and how hard they will work once their manuscript is published. For large houses, this is not as important, but for smaller independent presses who rub shoulders with their authors and work closely with them, personalities, outlook, character, and work ethic matter and affect everyone's bottom line.

Consequently, I have turned down many publishable manuscripts because of how authors present themselves. Unbeknownst to most writers, many of the hoops and mazes established to weed out manuscripts are also designed to weed out  . . . authors.

Here is one concrete example. Our website has clear and specific submission guidelines. They are there for a reason: they work well for us. They are also there for another reason: authors who can't follow simple directions won't follow simple suggestions or directions later--after we have invested significant time and money in their manuscript. Thus, when an author (or agent) calls and tries to pitch something on the phone, sends in a complete unsolicited manuscript, or does not follow our step-by-step guideline for submission, it tells us as much about them as it does about their work. And experience demonstrates that authors who will not follow requirements up front--or who buck against them--won't down the road, either.

Just the other day an author called and ARGUED with one of our staff about having to provide the information we requested. "Why can't I just email you my manuscript?" he asked. "You can take a look and that will be there." 

I once told an author that for most writers, obtaining a traditional publishing contract is like running around outside in Kansas trying to get struck by lightning. I'm kidding: it is easier to get struck by lightening (at least in Kansas.

So writers take heed: if you have a manuscript and you want to submit it to a publishing house, determine specific submissions requirements (they vary house to house) and follow them exactly. Editors are evaluating the procedure as well the substance.

Parts 2-4 to follow.

--tps

Winston Groom's Shiloh--Have you Read It?

Hello all,

Sorry for my absence. After my dive trip to Central America I had hand surgery and am just getting back into it. (And, several posts have disappeared. Weird.)

So . . . all of you know I love the Shiloh Campaign and that we published one of the outstanding books on the battle in Shiloh and the Western Campaign of 1862, by Cunningham and Smith.

I received Groom's latest from his publisher's marketing department and promised I would read and comment on it. I have finished it. I enjoyed it. I am curious how many of you have read it, and what you think of it? It is very different than Cunningham, but then it was intended to be.

-- tps

Hello all

I will be gone from June 1 through June 9 in Belize (Central America) diving with my son and 25 others from Fisheye Scuba in Folsom, California. We are staying out on a small island at a place called Banana Cove, and I won't have cell or email service--the first time I will not be checking in daily to my office since 1999 when I hit the Dominican Republic.

I have longed to hit the Yucatan  Peninsula since I was a kid. On the second to last day we fly to the mainland to hit a pair of Mayan sites and then raft back down a jungle river through caves, etc. Should be a good time, and a trip I am very much looking forward to. As those of you who know me can attest, I don't take vacations. It is time.

So back on once I return. Have a safe early June. And remember--Maps of Antietam hits our warehouse right when get back . . .

-- tps

Diving the arch in the Blue Hole. We will not be doing this, as it is very dangerous and is called the Diver's Cemetery. I would do it if my son was not there, but he is not experienced enough--yet.

This is the Blue Hole from the air. It is deep, and often home to Hammerhead sharks.