by Ellen E.M. Roberts
Editor-in-Chief
Where Books Begin
Publishers since the time of Hammurabi have been trying to figure out a way to publish content without having to deal with authors. Authors can be delightful but most often they are not. Insecurity plagues them. Successful ones feel like frauds; unsuccessful ones feel paranoid. I have always looked at the book submission process as a game. Publishers win an inning, authors win an inning. The game hasn’t ended yet, but right now publishers are ahead. Here’s how the game has played out so far.
Two hundred years ago, when American publishing was becoming a good way to make money, there were many more people who could read than could write. Writing was a demanding process, involving candlelight and quill pens. Very few people had the time, the education or the resources to write a whole book. Furthermore, the writer had to have penmanship that others could actually read. I almost fell over when I saw the original manuscript of George Eliot’s Middlemarch in the British Museum. Three cross-outs in the entire manuscript. She knew what she was going to say before she put pen to paper. And two hundred years ago, paper was scarce and paper was expensive. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin on used butcher paper, bloodstains and all. Publishers were looking for untried (read cheap) talent. The authors breezed ahead.
Largely because of the success of Mrs. Stowe’s book, the word got out about 1870 that publishers would read the writings of people they didn’t know. And if they liked it, pay money for it. Thus began the wretched tradition of manuscript submission. Publishers would brag that they found a hot property “over the transom” meaning an unknown writer slipped it through the opening atop the publisher’s door, early in the morning or late at night when the office was closed. Authors liked this process because it gave them access to the commerce of publishing and publishers liked it because they could get talent for little money. It was beginning to look like a tie.
A hundred years later, this tradition ran amok as Americans acquired word processors and personal computers that enabled them to type easily and quickly. Couch potatoes who used to entertain themselves with knitting and television viewing became novelists overnight. They might not know foreshadowing from a foreclosure, but they could fill the pages with typing.
With PCs in every den, the notion of the “original manuscript” disappeared. Agents and then writers discovered that they could create multiple original manuscripts. Publishers no longer knew whether they were the only ones considering a script for publication. This made it possible to submit to many publishers at a time. The volume of unsolicited manuscripts increased a hundred fold. Every publisher got to see every manuscript. Weary editorial assistants referred to the tons of unsolicited manuscripts that blanket the publisher’s daily mail like dirty snow as the “slush pile.” At famous publishers like Random House, entire rooms were crammed with manuscripts packed floor to ceiling waiting for an editor to have time to look at them. The authors were winning now.
With the arrival of the millennium, email again changed the submissions landscape. Publishers were really swamped now, because the author no longer even needed to print and post his script. He could just send it along as an attachment. Publishers refused to open the attachments from people they didn’t know. But they saw that email could alleviate the avalanches of unsolicited manuscripts if they asked for an email query first. They upped this by informing writers that they would only answer emails if they were interested. Writers could no longer tell if they were being considered or not. Was no news a rejection? How long should an author wait to hear from an editor or an agent?
The publishers are ahead now.
VOCABULARY WORDS FOR SUBMITTING AUTHORS
1 INTERNET Publishing companies and literary agencies are notoriously fluid in their staffing. Editors quit over policy; publishers fire because new management has new ideas; money runs out, so the up-and-coming editor is now a down-and-out waiter. If you hear of an editor who is looking for new talent or a new agency opening up, check the internet before your submit. Things change. In publishing, things routinely change overnight.
2. NETWORKING Facebook and My Space may seem tedious to you, but they are important resources for building an author platform. Broadcast your successes and link to your blog using these social networking sites. Many editors and agents are members.
3. PERSISTENCE. Agent Phil Spitzer calculates these days it takes ten years to publish a mainstream novel. If you are going to the trouble of writing a book, stick with it. Don’t give up submitting it. .
