The alarm goes off and you bury your head deeper under the covers . . .until you remember TODAY IS THE DAY! You are finally going to show the world your writing. Three drafts and three critiques later, you know you have a masterpiece. But how do you get it into people’s hands—beyond those people you know personally?
So, you’ve got that final piece of writing in perfect shape, your readers are responding to it the way you want them to, and you’re ready to send it out . . . but where to? A big part of being a writer is (dare we say it?) doing your HOMEWORK! Different magazines and book publishers look for different kinds of writing. You want to make sure that the person you send your manuscript (your written novel, essay, collection, and so on) to is the right one to read it. This doesn’t guarantee that the magazine or publishing house will snap it up and instantly publish it, but at least you’ll know you’ve got your foot stuck in the right door.
The first step in getting published is figuring out the best market for your material. And no, we don’t mean go to the grocery store! Market is a term magazines and book publishers use to describe the kinds of people who will buy a particular book. For example, if you read only nonfiction history books, you probably won’t be in the market for a romance novel! Most editors say the worst sin new writers make is sending them writing that isn’t appropriate for the market they publish for. That may sound complicated, but it’s not. If you have a great nonfiction piece, don’t send it to a publishing house that only does fiction books! That sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? But you wouldn’t believe how many writers don’t think about where they send their manuscripts—they just throw ’em out there and hope for the best!
So, how do you find the right market for your writing? Well, you already know which genre your work falls into (you did read chapter 3, right?). Next, decide whom you wrote it for—who’s your intended audience? Is it young kids? Is it teenagers? Is it all ages? Once you’ve got those two things figured out, it’s time to start searching for the magazine or book publisher who publishes that genre for that market.
Your librarian and English teacher are great people to go to for information and help. You’ll find many companies out there that actually specialize in publishing the writing of young people like you! Check out our list in the back of this book. A good place to begin your search is at your local library, with a reference book called Literary Market Place (or “the LMP” for those in the know). This huge book—which is not checked out but used in the library—gets updated every year, weighs about fifteen pounds, and includes the names and addresses of most publishers in the world, plus tons of magazines and contests. Each listing describes the genres that company publishes and the markets they publish for.
Another great way to figure out your market is to go to your local bookstore to find books that you think are similar to your masterpiece. Make a list of the companies who publish these books (you’ll find the information in the front of the book on the copyright page, usually the second or fourth page in the book). If you think a magazine is better for your writing, do the same thing in the magazine racks. Most magazine and book publishers also have websites you can visit, which will tell you more about the books and articles they do. Sometimes you can even request a catalogue be sent to you, right over the internet—for free. If you find some book publishers and magazines that have already published your type of writing, they’re the most likely to publish that type of writing again, right? You’ve figured out that your markets match. Way to go!
Okay, so you’ve found a bunch of magazines and book publishers that you think might be interested in your work, based on the kinds of material they publish. Narrow down your choices to five to fifteen places—and you need to be able to keep track of where you send everything. Before you send anything to anyone, however, get their writer’s guidelines! Writer’s guidelines are a checklist of what a magazine or book publisher is looking for and how they like to receive submissions. Most publishers make their guidelines available on their website. Some companies will want to see your whole manuscript, while others will just want to see an outline and maybe a short writing sample. All the companies will send you their writer’s guidelines for free—all you have to do is call them and ask or check their websites. This step is incredibly important—if you send a magazine or book publisher your writing, but don’t follow their writer’s guidelines, they’re more likely to reject your work. And that’s the last thing you want, right?
You will find that some publishers don’t accept unsolicited manuscripts, which means they only read material that comes to them through agents. If you do end up looking for one, you will follow the same process and get their guidelines before submitting your work for consideration.
When you get your writer’s guidelines, they will tell you to send either a completed manuscript or a query. Manuscript? Query? What the heck are those? Again, strange words, but simple meanings. A manuscript is what magazines and book publishers call your piece of writing. If they tell you to send your manuscript, that means you should send your entire poem, story, book, whatever, for them to read.
A query is more of a teaser. If they tell you to send a query or query letter, that means they want you to send them just a description of what you’ve written. They don’t want to read your actual writing unless they’re interested in the idea. If they like the idea in your query, then they’ll ask you to send the entire manuscript later.
Make sure you send exactly what they ask for. If a book publisher wants to see a query, don’t send a manuscript. If a magazine wants to see a whole manuscript, don’t send a partial one. One of the first keys to success on the road to publishing is that you’ve got to follow the rules! You don’t want to give these companies a stupid reason to reject your writing. You want them to at least read it and be impressed that you’re smart enough to follow their directions.
After you get your guidelines and know what you’re supposed to send, it’s time to create a proposal. A proposal is a package deal that usually includes these four very important things: (1) a cover letter (or query), (2) your manuscript, (3) some market research, and (4) a self-addressed, stamped envelope (SASE).
Make sure your cover letter is no more than ONE PAGE long! A great cover letter should do three things. First, it should grab an editor’s attention. Make your cover letter short, interesting, and funny! Editors get pretty bored reading dozens of identical cover letters every day. Make yours stand out from the rest. Make that editor wake up and pay attention to you.
Second, your cover letter needs to summarize what your manuscript or article is about—briefly! This is not the place to write pages and pages about what they’re going to soon read anyway. Keep it short and sweet—two to three sentences.
And third, your cover letter should include a little bit of information about you: any writing awards or contests you may have already won, work you do for your school newspaper or literary magazine, the inspiration for this particular piece, and even your hobbies or reasons for becoming a writer.
The next page shows an example of a great cover letter written by author Daryl Bernstein when he was a teenager. Daryl wrote this letter on his own—without help from his parents or teachers. In fact, his parents didn’t even know he was submitting to publishers until his book was accepted for publication!
Your Manuscript
Once you are a hundred percent sure that the manuscript you are sending follows the requirements of the magazine or book publisher, double-check that your manuscript:
1. has a title page with your name, address, phone number, and email address in the upper right-hand corner; a word count and page count in the upper left-hand corner; and the title of your manuscript in the center of the page, with your name underneath.
2. is double-spaced. Editors like to have room to write their comments.
3. has your name and the title of your work at the top of EVERY page, just in case your title page gets lost somewhere.
4. has page numbers, in case a clumsy editor drops your stuff and pages go flying.
Remember, you can certainly get creative with your proposal, but keep in mind that multicolored paper and wacky typefaces are often more annoying than interesting. A standard-size (8 1/2 x 11) white paper, with one-inch margins all around, and a basic, readable serif font like Times is your best bet. Let the creativity of your words and ideas grab their attention, not some hot-pink paper or gothic script.
Your Market Research
Here’s where you can really get a head start on your competition. Very few writers include market research in their proposal, but publishers love it! What you want to include is one page, titled “Market Research,” that describes the audience or market for your book, any similar competing books, and any unusual places a publisher could sell your book, such as specialty stores like Urban Outfitters or grocery stores like Whole Foods.
Since you’ve already done your homework, you should know who your market is. For submissions to magazines and book publishers, you should write something like, “Any guy between the ages of twelve and sixteen should love my book/article on . . . ,” or “Children ages four to eight and their grandparents, parents, and teachers will all enjoy reading my book/story.”
The second step on your Market Research page is just for book publishers—if you’re only submitting to magazines, just skip it. After listing who you think will want to buy your book, list a few other books out there that are similar to yours and how yours is different and better. (If no other books like yours have ever been published, good for you! Tell them that.) Maybe you wrote a book about great after-school snacks for teens. You could mention that other book you saw that had after-school recipes for kids, but point out that it was written for very young children while yours is written for teens. And the other after-school snack book that is written for teens is really boring and lame, but yours is hip and cool. This is where you tell the editor why your book is so important.
And last, brainstorm some ideas about where a publisher could sell your book, besides in bookstores (again, skip this step for magazines). Your after-school snack book could be sold in kitchen stores, grocery stores, and even high schools! Think outside the box; be creative. Make the publisher see how many people will love to buy your book.
Market research is the first thing book publishers do when they get a manuscript they are interested in. And even magazine editors will find your information helpful. By sending them market research with your manuscript, you’re doing their homework for them! And who doesn’t love it when someone does their homework for them?
Your SASE
You really know you’re around real writers when you hear people talking about their SASEs (“say-zees”). That’s because including that Self-Addressed, Stamped Envelope is such a common part of the submission process. If you want your manuscript sent back to you (just in case, for some unthinkable reason, the magazine or book publisher decides not to publish it), your proposal package needs to include an envelope with your name, address, and postage on it.
Your SASE must have enough postage on it to get back to you. If not, kiss your manuscript good-bye—companies not only won’t return it to you (if they did that for everyone, they’d go broke pretty quickly!), they’ll get annoyed that you didn’t read their rules. Make sure that you weigh your manuscript at the post office on a letter scale so you know how much postage you need to put on your SASE. Also, a helpful tip, make sure you don’t use dated postage. It won’t be valid after the date printed on the postage label.
Once you start sending out your work, you need to keep track of where it’s gone! Every time you send out a proposal, write down this information:
1. what you sent.
2. the editor and the publisher you sent it to. (If possible, it’s always better to find a specific editor than just the department.)
3. the date you mailed it.
4. how much it cost to mail.
5. how long the magazine or book publisher is supposed to take to respond (this is listed in their writer’s guidelines).
6. the date you get a response, plus any comments they give you.
Some writers keep a box with index cards to keep track of everything; others keep a list on their computer. Whatever works for you is fine, but do something. It’s better to keep track as you go along than to try to remember later.
Now’s the hard part—waiting. Keep track of when your chosen magazines and book publishers are supposed to respond to your proposal. If they say it takes them eight to twelve months to respond, don’t start freaking out after six months! If eight months go by and you haven’t heard anything, it’s perfectly fine for you to give them a call or send a letter, email, or postcard to find out what’s up. Do not call before their time is up!
Since it can take months to get a response to your proposal, and since you’ll probably go crazy waiting, this is a good time to keep writing! Cut out the following checklist and stick it somewhere you can easily find it as you start sending out proposals (like on your bulletin board or the side of your computer), and don’t forget to check it every time you send something out . . . even if you think you remember all the steps. Better safe than sorry!
If this all seems like a lot of work, well, you’re right. It is. But look at the bright side—you have written something you want the rest of the world to see. You are definitely on your way. Just remember when you were still wondering what you would write about! You may not see your work published next month, or even next year, but if you stay with it, you will make it as a writer.
Twenty-five-year-old Zoe Skye is a graduate of Columbia University and a doctoral student in English at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She works as a book reviewer.
When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
I think I always wanted to write about books—it just seemed the most interesting and natural thing to me. Realizing in middle-school and high school English that close readings and passage analyses were my favorite parts of the class . . . it all stemmed from that.
What do you like to write the most and why?
I’m most comfortable writing about fiction at this point, so I suppose you’d call that nonfiction on fiction. I like the mixture of critical distance and creativity that kind of writing can afford.
What are your goals for your writing future?
Every time I write a review, I realize how many holes there are in my literary background! So I guess a big goal is to broaden and deepen that base: to read more books and think and write about them.
What was your first published piece (and format) and how did you feel?
My first book review was published in the Brooklyn Rail, a great independent monthly paper that’s willing to take chances on new writers. It was pretty neat to see it in print, and even more so, it made me want to write another one.
Where else have you been published?
The Los Angeles Times, Mother Jones, and The New York Times Book Review.
Do you write full-time, and if not, would you like to? What would be your dream job?
I’m starting a graduate program in English, so soon enough I’ll be writing about books full-time, in one way or another. It’s hard to imagine anything I’d rather do.
What advice would you give to a young writer?
For someone who wants to review, take a chance and write to an editor: be persistent, and once you’ve published one review and have a clip to show for it, it’ll be that much easier to write the next.
Do you think reading helps your writing?
I couldn’t write a thing without reading!
What are your favorite reads?
For book reviews, I like Bookforum, The New York Times Book Review, The Literary Review, The Nation, The Guardian, The Millions, and various other newspapers, magazines, and blogs.
Name some of the authors who have inspired you and why.
Dwight Garner is one of my favorite reviewers—there’s a pith and clarity to his writing that’s poetic at the same time.
