Preparing to Submit

You might remember me talking about the KidLitVic conference that I attended in May. You can check out my previous post here. While there I had the opportunity to attend a free (YES!) workshop run by YA author and editor Melissa Keil on submitting to publishers (which is the way it’s usually done in Australia).

Melissa had loads of great advice, including that editors need to go on and be able to sell your book to a whole team of people. Even if the editor loves it they need to be able to say that the books is salable, how it compares with other books in the genre/age bracket and where it will sit in the market.

She also shared an in-depth example of a cover letter and made the following points:

  1. Give context for where you have met the editor – particularly if they’ve given you their direct email – in the subject line or opening line of your letter (ie. if you met the editor at a conference, workshop, etc. remind them of that.)
  2. Make the effort of finding out the editor’s name. These are easily found on publisher websites and social media. If you can’t, ‘Dear Submissions Editor’ or ‘Dear Children’s Editor’ is fine too.
  3. Say why you’ve chosen to submit to that particular agent/publisher. Do you like the books they’ve published? Did you see on social media that they particularly liked a book that similar than yours? Do your research on what that publisher is looking for and what sort of books they publisher. I definitely recommend reading a few books in your genre that are published by the publisher you’re interested in.
  4. Say what the story is about concisely. This is your ‘elevator’ pitch. Two sentences that share with the publisher who your protagonist is, what they want and what the conflict and stakes are.
  5. Indicate books that yours are similar to, but also how it differs from books that are already in the market. (It’s fine to mention books that aren’t published by the publisher you’re submitting too. They have a thorough appreciation of what’s on the market).
  6. You may not be published but you are a writer. You’ve written a book, after all. Not only should you claim this title but demonstrate how you’re a professional by indicating that you’ve attended conferences, workshops and/or contributed your writing to publications. Publishers want to work with authors who are professional and committed, even if they’re just beginning their career.
  7. Include a short biography with information that is relevant to the manuscript that you’re submitting. For example, I write YA and I always mention that I was a secondary school teacher for a number of years. I don’t say that I love needle felting and drawing – it’s part of who I am but has no baring on my manuscript (unless it was about needle-felting…hmm).
  8. Include your word count and age range.
  9. Alway, always, always, check out the submission guidelines of the particular publisher you’re submitting to. Submission guidelines not only vary between publishers, they can vary between departments in the same publisher (between the adult and young adult departments for example).

That’s a lot of stuff to fit into a cover letter. One to one and a half pages, at the most. But it might also be your first contact with an editor, so it’s worth getting right.

To this I would also add, don’t let your age deter you. At the conference I went to there was a range of ages from people in their early twenties to people in their sixties and beyond. Publishers are looking for great books that people will buy. If you show that you are knowledgeable and professional, even at thirteen, sixteen, or nineteen, there’s no reason why that book shouldn’t be yours.

Everyone has an opinion

Everyone has an opinion. What's yours?

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

w

Connecting to %s
https://wendyallott.com/2018/06/06/preparing-to-submit/
wendyallott.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2018-26
93843
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:V6XAGCCIRSZYQPVUDKEALJQGQMK2C7PV
<urn:uuid:16442c5b-3c71-44ff-ac7c-1cae040af51b>
2018-06-18T00:05:28Z
192.0.78.25
text/html
sha1:UOKM7NCK2XWCXNFM4JD363L3TH3XFCGB
<urn:uuid:e2181dc0-8476-4b05-a846-1350ac8bb39b>
https://wendyallott.com/2018/06/06/preparing-to-submit/
response
<urn:uuid:5fe78f4c-24dd-453b-9a3d-da3e8987eaa8>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-30-196-115.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2018-26
operator: Common Crawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for June 2018
publisher: Common Crawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf