Kevis’s Comments (group member since Jul 22, 2009)

Kevis’s comments from the I'm Trying to Get a Book Published! group.

To help you see what I mean about each agent or publisher having thier own submission standards, take a look at this publisher's Submission Guidelines:

Tor Books-submission guidelines


Submitting writing to Tor
We'd have sworn our submissions guidelines covered all the necessary information, but a few questions keep turning up. Like: How much detail should there be in the synopsis? And: If the book has a prologue, does that count as one of the three sample chapters, or can the writer send the prologue plus the first three chapters? And so forth.
The answer is simple: send whatever you think is necessary and sufficient to sell the book to us. This isn't a class assignment.
The question that puzzles us the most is, "What are the odds of getting published by Tor?" That is, what is our ratio of acceptance to rejection for manuscripts in our slush pile?
Answer: for very good books, the odds are excellent. For books we don't like, the odds are abysmal. No other measurement is meaningful. If we have a month in which we don't see any manuscripts we like, we don't buy manuscripts we dislike just to keep up our acquisition rate.
If you absolutely have to have a rough estimate of our rejection rate, the answer is that we reject most of them. But look at it this way: if you don't send us your manuscript, the odds that we'll publish it approach absolute zero. It's your call.
________________________________________
The Official Tor Submissions Guidelines
Dear Writer,
Here are some good rules to follow when submitting your work to us.
1. Do not submit work on disk, tape, or other electronic media; do not submit work by email. Submissions should be sent to Tor Books, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010.
2. Address unsolicited science fiction and fantasy submissions to Patrick Nielsen Hayden and unsolicited mainstream submissions to Melissa Singer.
3. Submit only the first three chapters of your book, and a synopsis of the entire book. (We're not big on query letters, since we can't tell whether we'll like the book until we see a chunk of the manuscript.) And please make sure you send the first three chapters. No matter how good your synopsis is, it's difficult for us to get a good sense of the book from chapters 4, 17, and 32.
4. Your cover letter should state the genre of the submission, and previous sales or publications if relevant.
5. Never send us the only copy of your book. The U.S. Post Office is no more perfect than the rest of us, and things do get lost in the mail. Always put your name and address on the manuscript. In addition, your name, the manuscript title, and the page number should appear on every page of the manuscript. If you wish your manuscript to be returned, enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope large enough to hold your submission; publishers are not responsible for returning submissions unaccompanied by return postage. If you do not wish your manuscript to be returned, please say so on the cover letter, and enclose a stamped, self-addressed, business-sized envelope for our reply. If you enclose a stamped, self-addressed postcard, we will return it to verify receipt of the manuscript.
6. Type your manuscript on plain white paper, double-spaced, using only one side of the page. Do not staple or otherwise bind your manuscript; a paper clip will suffice. If you use a computer and printer, do not submit low-resolution dot matrix printouts; they will not be read. Please do not use a fancy font (this is almost as difficult to read as the palest dot-matrix), and please make sure you use a font large enough to read easily. Please turn off margin justification and proportional spacing; pages with ragged right margins are easier for us to read, and easier for our production department to set.
7. Please indicate italics by underlining and indicate boldface by drawing a wavy line beneath the affected characters. Copy to be typeset needs to be marked in very specific ways, and if you use italics or boldface in the manuscript, they will still need to be marked up by production.
8. Please allow at least four to six months for your manuscript to be considered. If you haven't heard from us after four months, and wish to make sure your manuscript got here, please write a letter stating the genre, the date of submission, and the title of the manuscript, rather than calling. We will respond promptly.
9. We do not accept simultaneous submissions.
Good luck!

Kirilee,

I'll give you a few pointers on writing a synopsis.

-First things first, you have to strive for absolute perfection. I understand that this is not the final version you intend to submit to an agent or publishers, but if you begin by getting all the misspellings out run on sentences out of the way, you'll have fewer things to worry about later.

-When you are writing a synopsis you have to write in the present tense. Words like "had" needs to become "has", "was" needs to become "is", and so forth.

-You should also be aware that every good synopsis has to include the end of the story. Publishers and agents don't want authors to play footsie with them or try to create suspense with the material they send. They want to know your story in its entirety. This means that your synopsis has to reveal the overall story including the most improatant plot points.

-With a glance, I can tell you that your synopsis is too short. Because of the nature of a synopsis, they usually require a greater word count than what is currently in yours. Truth be told, publishers and agents hate it when authors send them stock material. They usually have their own specific requirements about the length and content of a book submission. This means that you have to research every agent or publisher that you intend to submit your work to in order to learn what their specific requests are. Like me, they can dissect a synopsis with a single glance and tell if you have individualized your submission for them.

-One of the most important things to keep in mind when you write a synopsis is that it has to be very visual. You are telling them a condensed version of your story. Without using overly ornate or prosaic language, you have to make certain that you are not writing a treatise. Your synopsis should be exciting and make the agent or publisher want to read every word. Use very descriptive language and make sure there is lots of energy in your synopsis.

-You will also have to learn that a synopsis has to be formatted a certain way for each submission. Many agents and publisher require you to submit your synopsis with double space and a 1/12 inch quarter margin for your synopsis. Others have different requirements.

-I think one of the major problems with your query is that the theme of your book is not present. this is also something that needs to tie your synopsis together.

To sum it all up, there is a lot more you need to do to get your synopsis in submissable form, but I would rather you fix the things I have mentioned already and do a little research on what a synopsis is supposed to look like. I have included the links to a couple of websites that I think you will find useful.

I'll also see if I can dig up some of the material that I have in my files on writing a synopsis. AS soon as I find them, i will post them online for you. In the meantime, feel free to do your own research on this subject. There are many ways to write a synopsis, so you need to familairze your self with them. I'll get back to you as soon as I can with that information. But in the meantime here are those links:


How to write a synopsis:

http://www.writing-world.com/publish/...
http://www.fmwriters.com/Visionback/I...



Information about why you need an agent:

http://bit.ly/dutiu

Sure. I'll check it out and let you know what I think.

Kirilee,

At this point I wouldn't worry too much about the length of your chapters. I think it's a mistake to worry about such things when you are first writing a book. Those are the things you concern yourself with when you are in the process of revising your book. I have found that most young writers try to polish every chapter as they go along. This is a mistake, since you will likely have to go back and change what you wrote before to keep pace with your story since it normally changes as you write it. You should always focus on getting your entire story down on paper. Then you can always go back and change things.

When I first started writing novels some years ago, I would always try to make sure that every chapter was perfect. Eventually, I learned that it was more important to simply 'get the story written', then come back and revise it. It took me 4 years to write my first novel. On the other hand, it only took me 6 weeks to write the final draft of The Legend of Witch Bane.

My advice to you and any other writer is to get your story down and then go back and revise it later. The actual length or word count of your individual chapters is something that can wait until the final stages of completing your story.

No problem. Glad I could help. :)

Kirilee,

If you want to get published through a commercial publisher, getting an agent is the way to go. The waiting game is going to be a bit of a pain, but it greatly increases your chances of getting a book deal. Just make sure you write an awesome query letter! It's your ticket to getting your own agent.

Kirilee,

BTW, I know you asked in another thread how much it costs to publish a book, so I went ahead and posted some information for you. Hope you find it helpful.

Hey, can't say I didn't warn you, LOL!!!

Kirilee,

Self-publishing can cost anywhere from zero to several thousand dollars. It just depends on which approach you take. For instance, you can publish a digital book for free using Smashword, MobiPocket, or Amazon's Digital Text Platform. You can also publish a hard copy version of your books on CreateSpace or Lulu for free. But if you want more bang for your buck so that your book will be for sale at more than one online retail store, you are either going to have to shell out some cash to purchase your own ISBN # or use a POD publisher who offers you your own ISBN# as part of their publishing package.

I will warn you that not every POD publisher is what they claim to be. Publishers like PublishAmerica and iUniverse are infamous for taking advantage of their authors and offering them little control of their products. On the other hand, my publisher Outskirts Press offer me virtually unlimited freedom in how I choose to produce and market my books. In fact, my publisher makes it easier for me to have my books sold at bricks and mortar retail stores than most other POD publishers. As for how much it costs to publish a book with Outskirts Press, their publishing packages start at $199.00.

Kirilee,

If you think my gamer side is scary, you should see me at a Heavy Metal concert!!! :P

Marise,

Now you've got my curiosity peeked. I'm dying to know which games are those. You can't leave me hanging now! I gotta know!!! (BTW, that's the gamer side of my personality starting to show. Scary, isn't it?) :P

Marise,

You've known me too long to know that I would never get bored from reading your stories, LOL! Actually, I want to give you some delicious feedback. So I'm going to to type up something that I'll more than likely send you through a PM. BTW, I love what the first chapter. I just need to finish reading the others before I give you my thoughts. Don't worry, it's coming!!! :)

So glad to hear it, Rita. Hope you enjoy the subtlty! :)

Marise,

I totally forgot to go back and check your story. I'm headed there now. :)

Hi Marise,

So glad to hear from you! You are absolutely correct that I wanted the cover of Rogue Hunter to look like a video game cover. I doubt many people know it, but I'm a die-hard video gamer and have been playing video games since the first video game "Pong" was created back in the late 70's. I've personally owned or played ever video game system ever created and was heavily influenced by video games while growing up.

Rogue Hunter borrows heavily on my experience as a video gamer. It's subtly done, but there are lots of allusions to video games in Rogue Hunter. Like I said, it isn't obvious and is its own original story. But anyone who pays close attention to the story will find some really cool video-game related references hidden in the text.

Anyway, Rogue Hunter is still free. So anyone who wants to download it for free can do so by visiting this link:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/...

I hope everyone enjoys reading it. :)

Sorry everyone, but I have to disagree with the consensus here. One of the major problems that I have noticed among the writers here on GoodReads is that their stories are underwritten and that their chapters are too short. If you look at pretty much any commercially published book, you'll notice that the average page count per chapter is upwards of 25 pages.

Although I do not enjoy reading books with exorbantly long chapters, I don't believe in superimposing a superficial page limit on a given chapter in a story. A chapter, like a book, should be as long as it needs to be. Chapters should be constructed thematically, not numerically. If it takes X amount of pages to tell what happens in a given chapter, then that's how long it should be. Some chapters can be as short as one page, others well over 100. It all depends on the nature of the story being told.

In my opinion, Ronna, you should make your chapters as long (or as short) as they need to be, not a page longer or shorter. If you construct your chapters thematically, your readers will not care how long your chapters are. That's why we have book marks.

I have to agree with Brigid. Most of my names just come to me naturally without any foresight or planning. However, there are times when I need to tweak a name or want to give it a real-world reference. In my sci-fi novel I have characters with names such as 'Cain' and 'Abel'. I chose to use these names, because the characters exhibit personality traits that are similar to the ones shown by their biblical counterparts.

On the other hand, in my fantasy stories, I have created languages for my cultures and like to construct names from those languages. One example of a name I constructed is 'Betzenmegel' which has an obvious Germanic flavor.

Ultimately, the most important thing to me when creating names is to make sure that the name SOUNDS as though it belongs to the character. To paraphrase Orson Scott Card, can you imagine if Count Dracula's name was Count Cuthbert?

Ronna,

Technically, it shouldn't cost you anything more than the cost of postage stamps to become a commercially published author. If an agent is asking you for money, he or she is not legit and you should avoid that agent like the plague. A reputable agent or commercial publisher will never ask you for money. The reason being that they are going to make far more money from your book sales than they will taking money from you.

In the case of an agent, the standard rate for them to represent authors is 10% of your royalties from books sales. That may not sound like much to you. But it means that if you make $$100,000 dollars annually in book sales, the agent gets to claim $10,000 of that amount.

You should bear in mind that this is just the way business is done. An agent is your best friend in the publishing world and is there to guide you throughout your career not just sell a book. This is why agents are so picky about representing authors. They are in it for the future, not just a quick payday.

So if an agent or publisher ever asks you for money upfront, a red flag should go up immediately. This is a scam artist and you should quit having any dealings with them.

Hope that answers your question. :)

I love printed books too. But you have to admit, it's a lot more convenient to tote your 1500+ book collection around with you with a Kindle than a knapsack!

Hi Marise,

Looks like I have some catching up to do. Will head over to History of Time and check out your sample chapters. I'll let you know how it goes. ;)