The Devil is in the Details

I can remember the awful old days sitting at my Smith Corona Electra 120, typing away at manuscripts with carbon paper, and cursing whenever I made a typo because then I'd have to type the whole darned page over again. I tried using white-out and correction tape, which was okay for small typos, but white-out clots and correction tape doesn't work for the really complex letters such as "g" and "f" because if I was replacing them with a letter that did not go above or below the line, the outline of the first letter could always be seen.

Thank goodness those days are gone. Now we have computers-- no more carbon paper; it's easy to correct typos; and toner seems to last somewhat longer than my typewriter ribbon ever did. But the heavy use of computers has brought its own problems so here are some things to keep in mind when you are submitting a manuscript:

• Spell check does not catch everything. I wish it did. I wish that it could catch the mistakes I made when I type one thing but am actually thinking about something else. But it doesn't. It's a tool, a useful tool, but proofing your manuscript means actually going through and reading every single word of it yourself.
  
• Computers have all kinds of beautiful fonts and it is so easy to change colors and use fancy curlique type. In a word, don't. If the editor has to work too hard to read your manuscript, s/he is not likely to bother. Choose one font, a simple one (I personally prefer Arial, but Times, Courier, Helvetica and Geneva are others that are easily readable.) Use the same font for all of your manuscript, use 12 point font and remember the KISS mantra. (Keep It Simple Simon.) (Yes, I know the last "S" does NOT stand for "Simon!")
  
• If you scan your manuscript into the computer, you may not realize that the header of your manuscript does not automatically become a header in the Word document. Instead, it goes into the body of the manuscript, and if you reformat the manuscript in a way that alters the pagination, then your header is going to end up in weird places throughout your manuscript. For example:
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"fascinating story this is the best thing i've ever read in my life where can I see more of this she's a brilliant writer this will be on the bestseller list for sure i think it will win a pulitzer or a Hugo or an Edgar and Spielberg is probably going to want the rights

Robinson 3

I can see this being a box office hit and they will probably want a sequel I should probably set up a special phoneline for all the calls I'm going to get."

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Now, if you, the writer do not go through and manually remove all those lovely little header lines and bring the text together the way it is supposed to be...

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"fascinating story this is the best thing i've ever read in my life where can I see more of this she's a brilliant writer this will be on the bestseller list for sure i think it will win a pulitzer or a Hugo or an Edgar and Spielberg is probably going to want the rights I can see this being a box office hit and they will probably want a sequel I should probably set up a special phoneline for all the calls I'm going to get."

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...then guess who is going to have to do so? Assuming the acquisitions editor doesn't reject the manuscript right off the bat, some poor editor is going to have to do it, and that editor will NOT be happy about it. We have a manuscript right now where the writer did not go through and manually remove all the headers when she scanned her manuscript in. We also receive manuscripts which have even more typos than the ones I deliberately left in the passage above. Those do NOT make a good impression on us!

• Read your manuscript. Please. After you finish putting that last word on the page, set it aside for a week, then go back and read it. Believe me, you will find mistakes that need to be corrected. You only have one shot at making a first impression on a publisher, so make it the best you possibly can. Hopefully you wouldn't show up at a job interview with dirty, wrinkled clothes, mismatched shoes and traces of your lunch stuck in your teeth. The same principle applies to submitting your manuscript.

• Look at the publisher's guidelines before you submit. Some publishers are very particular about how manuscripts should be submitted to them. I've seen some that specify the exact font, margins, and header content. Sadly, some writers operate under the assumption that those guidelines don't apply to them. Please remember that you NEED the publisher's good will, so why would you start right off the bat by alienating them?

• Know your publisher. I don't mean to find out what your publsher does in his/her spare time but spend some time looking at the publisher's web page and getting to know the kinds of books they take. Why waste your time sending your children's book to a publisher who clearly says "No children's books?"

The first impression the publisher has of you is the first page of your submission. If I receive an email from a writer who has obviously not got a clue about Swimming Kangaroo Books, I carry that impression with me into my evaluation of the manuscript. There is one author who has submitted the same book to us 4 times. Each time he has submitted the complete manuscript, even though we request a query, synopsis and sample pages. Each time he has addressed his submission to "Dear Publisher." And each time, he has included the names of all the other publishers to whom he is submitting in the To: line of his email. Is it any surprise that we have rejected his work four times in a row with a standard, form email?

One of our very first submissions was from someone who had spent some time on our page and who addressed her email directly to me. She complimented us on our webpage and asked us to look over her synopsis and sample pages. Before we even looked at her manuscript, we knew we liked her personally, and we kept that in mind as we evaluated her submission. (And congratulations, Larriane Wills, on the release of your first book, THE KNOWING, and the upcoming release of your second book, LOOKING GLASS PORTAL!)