Things to avoid when submitting to a Publisher | Behind the Books

There's a hard road to walk as someone who wants to be taken seriously as a publisher in this industry and in this province. There are mistakes we see repeated over and over again, mistakes that -- in the rare times we get together to talk about it -- all the publishers agree are mistakes: but we can't say anything about them. We can't make a FAQ section on out submissions guidelines that calls out these mistakes. And we can't do it because -- and this is weird -- we can't look like we're accepting submissions from people so early in their career that they'd need that advice. Publishers rely not just o sales but on grants, and part of a lot of grant systems it based on literary merit. Put bluntly: you have to look like you're a professional organization that deals with professional authors, so you can't have criteria on your website that reads like it was designed to help first-timers.

It's a paradox, because it would help everyone if we could do that. You, the young author just looking for help and a leg up in this industry, would have a better shot at getting through and the publisher would have to deal with less things they find frustrating.

So here's a nice middle ground. I'm going to talk about the three things that will get your pitch or submission sneered at here, on my personal site, where I operate as a writer chiefly and not as a publisher, but bring with me those years of experience on the publishing side of things: tally-ho.

1.      Know what parts of marketing fall under the Publisher.

This comes in a few flavour, but I see this every year when we open our submissions, and every time we participate in a "Pitch the Publisher" -style event. Some flavours this problem comes in include - but are not limited to - Don't design and share your own cover, Don't announce that the book is coming soon, Don't start your own marketing campaign before you're picked up.

What authors don't get is, the act of bringing a book into the public space is an artform in and of itself, and it's one that there are less people adept at than most others. There is an art to producing a cover. There is an art to announcing a book. There is an art to a marketing campaign. And these are arts that the publisher makes their living at.

The act of seeking a Publisher is the act of seeking a partner with which to make your book, and this isn't like group projects at school where you have to do all the work: this is a group project where the Publisher is just as invested as the author is. That can be hard to hear because your book is your baby, but it's true. Baby might be a good metaphor actually, because authors who insist on taking the reins on all aspects of the process like this I would hate to co-parent with.

If we go on your website that you happily listed at the bottom of your submission and we see "My Book Title -- Coming Soon," I hate to break it to you, we will assume that you got picked up by another publisher and we will reject your novel. We won't even read it: why would we? We're paying the person who evaluates the submissions, why would we waste money paying them to evaluate a work that's already spoken for? We might not even send you a rejection letter if we notice, because we assume you've already been published and we don't want to seem spiteful. There is a local publisher who has become famous for sending out rejections for books that are already successful (sometimes for years) with rival presses, and I'd love for them to realize the bile they are indenturing in the writing community as a result.

If you make your own cover and share it out to your friends and family on Facebook or your website -- you are poisoning the well of that book's marketing. You are teaching people "this is the cover to look for, not the one that comes out." And Publishers just love when they do a cover reveal and the first comments they get are from your Great Aunt saying "I liked the one you made yourself better." Also, bare in mind: people do judge a book by its cover. You're not just poisoning the well of readers, you're poisoning the publisher. All we ask for is the text, and there is a reason. You're not "going a step beyond" when you submit a cover, you're poisoning our perception of the book. Because, hear me out, what if we hate your cover? What if we hate it and it poisons our perception of the book, and now we're reading a text we would have liked but in our minds it's already attached to that thing we hate?

It's painful, but they don't ask for a cover for a reason.

Not only the above reasons, but there are Printers in the world who dress themselves up like Publishers, places who take your money (no Publisher will) and will just print the files you give them (no Publisher will). So we're over here acting like a Publisher, and you show up and treat us like a Printer. Or like a Vanity Press. Or like a Predatory Publishing Scam. And it's insulting. And that's not the foot you want to start your business relationship on.

2.      Don't demand to be seen.

This is going to be hard for some of you reading this to believe, but every year we get calls and emails from people demanding to be moved to the top of the list. "I know you got in 200 submissions, but mine is the best, and I deserve to be seen first."

If you can't handle waiting, or if you're impatient, you're in the wrong industry.

And I need you to understand that calling and showing that to be the case will get you an answer: just not the one you want. Because what you're demonstrating is that you'd be hard to work with and that you're not cut out for this.

Here's a true story. A few years ago, my publishing company had it's submissions window open. Every publisher has different rules, we opened for two months out of the year and then spent the rest of the year going through them. Ten months, that was the longest you'd have to wait. I know that seems like forever. But, some people got seen right away: such is the luck of the draw.

And we had someone -- not me -- working the submissions, a professional, and they were going through them at their own pace. Keep in mind they had a regular 9-5 job as well, they were working through this pile in their off hours over the course of ten months for a lump some and a bonus if a book they suggested got picked up.

So this author calls me a month into the wait time, and they are furious. Keep in mind, my work phone number routes to my personal phone. So I just pick up, say my name, greet them warmly: and they start in at me, angry, raging. I am in the cereal aisle at WalMart and they are just laying into me, right away, furious that we haven’t gotten back to them yet.

So I explain, I explain how we do things. Two months open, up to ten months to process, yadda yadda yadda. And they yell: “well, can’t you order them to pick up the pace?” And I say… well, no. They were hired to do a job over the course of ten months, that was their contract. They’re doing it. As long as they get the job done in ten months, they’re doing their job. And that’s true whether they space out the 200 submissions and deliver back 20 answers a month or if they put it on the back-burner and deliver 200 answers in month 10: they are fulfilling their contract, I can’t break that.

“Well,” they say, huffing, “can’t you tell them to move mine up to next in line?” And I tell them… no. I have no control over how they pick which one to do next, nor do I want to control that. Maybe they do it randomly. Maybe they categorize them by genres and ask themselves “what am I in the mood for today? Romance? Historical?” so that they’re in the best frame of mind to receive said story. Maybe they’re just going in alphabetical order or order of submission, I tell them, but that’s not my concern, I’m not going to micro-manage them. They’re an adult, a professional in this industry, I’m not going to insult them by telling them how to do their job.

“Well you should tell them to do me next. You should tell them to drop what they’re doing and do mine.” Up until this point I was calm, nice, explaining the way things worked at my company (and to my knowledge, the industry at large), but now I’m starting to get agitated. So I say: there are other people waiting, just like you. Right now, the Editor is reading someone else’s submission, and they’re a writer waiting for an answer just like you, and you want me to tell the Editor: stop working on that one and work on this one? Why? Right now it’s as fair as fair can be, why would I insert myself into it to help you but to hurt someone else?

“You should do it,” they said, “because mine is the best.” Yeah, I say, everyone thinks that. Spoilers, every author thinks their book is the best, just like every parent thinks their child is the best. Every author on that list thinks their book is the bee’s knees – that’s why they wrote it.

So finally, the author demands an answer right now. And they say they’ll go to my supervisor if I don’t. So I tell them I don’t have a supervisor, I’m the owner. I don’t think they believed me until later, I think they thought there was no way an owner would be the person picking up the phone. But still, they demand an answer right now, so I give them one: “You demand an answer this moment? Okay then, the answer is No.” And they sputter for a moment, stutter. Somehow, they didn’t expect that, and when they come back they ask “May I ask why?” To which I say: “Pretty much this conversation. I would not like to work with someone who behaves like this.”

And you need to understand that. When a Publisher takes you on, you will be out there in the world representing them. You’ll be at an event signing books and people will see who published them, and if you’re rude and awful, the customer will reflect that onto the publisher. We don’t want people like that repping our brand.

(They back-peddled then and said they’d wait for a response from the Editor. I told them I was that moment emailing them to take that work off the list, not to read it. I’m paying this person to read works, why would I let them waste time on something I know I’m going to reject? So they started in saying I’d “be sorry” when their book “sold a million copies” and at this point I was done so I said: “You might well sell that many, but I can guarantee you I will not be sorry, because I cannot imagine any amount of money that would make up for having to deal with you.” That ended the call.)

3. Do Not Self-Publish “While You’re Waiting”

This is the big one, the one we see every year. The one we check for, every time a submission comes in. Do not – and I cannot stress this enough – self publish your book while you’re waiting to hear from publishers.

“But Matt,” I hear someone say, because I’ve heard this a million times, “it doesn’t specifically say on your submissions guidelines not to do that!” Every year I hear that, and I have to be professional. Here I can say what I feel (cracks knuckles): Real life is not ‘Air Bud.’ Just because there’s no rule specifically saying not to do something, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t exercise common sense. What I always want to say is: “there’s no rule saying not to submit the book on fire either, but you’d know not to do that, right?”

And I’ll go one step further, and I know this is mean: you know above where I said we can’t put some things in our rules because we want to look good for grants funders? This is the big one for that. We cannot look like we are courting authors foolish enough to make that mistake.

That’s how bad you look when you do this. We can’t look like we’re willing to work with someone who would even need to be told that. It would literally cost us money in funding.

Let me go through (some) the reasons this is a bad idea.

You are denigrating the hard work of our colleagues. I bet you didn’t think of this one, huh? So here’s the thing: self-publishing is not a less valid form of publishing. It is equally valid, an equal part of our industry, in the same way an indie film is just as (if not more) an impressive part of the industry as a studio film. For some reason people think self-publishing doesn’t “count” as being published when it’s right there in the name: you are published. You are the publisher. We can’t look at it, it’s already published. But furthermore, by saying that “it doesn’t count,” you are denigrating the work of all the hard-working self-published authors we know in the industry. Authors that work day in and day out, pushing their work with their own marketing machines they make at home. I know self-published authors who make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, who have thousands of fans and readers, who have won literary awards. In short, all of the benchmarks for success traditionally-published authors have, and often more. If your argument is that “self-published doesn’t count” you are insulting their years of hard work and I will be, to put it mildly, angry.

You are taking sales. The amount of times I have heard some version of this. There’s one local person who said this to my face. “Well, I put a lot of work and hours into this book, so I figured I would make that back by self-publishing first and then I’d go wide with you and get royalties from your sales.” First, let me explain to you: we respect the hard work and sweat equity you’ve put into your book, but we are going to match that. We are going to put in sweat getting it to print, and we are going to put in actual money, getting it edited, designed, printed, and marketed. You and I are going to break even, effort-wise. So if you’re saying “I needed to make my share back first” you’ve changed the equation, because now you’ve been paid back. We’re not both bringing equal risk to this venture now: you’re taking none and it’s all on us. But also, while we think on that, there’s this illusion from these authors who do this that “the sales from my personal network are mine, the publisher shouldn’t get a cut of that, because that’s sales I would have gotten on my own.” That’s wrong-headed. We both bring things to the table in this relationship, and often those early sales from your network are the thing that helps us recoup the initial big losses while the marketing takes hold. From the publisher point of view, you’re taking that from us, especially if you’re hiding the fact that you self-published. From our point-of-view, you are literally stealing from us. This is a fraudulent way to enter into a business relationship.

I need to make this as clear as possible: if you have engaged in the above example, I have blackballed you in the industry. I have a file on you that says “never work with this person.” Any future submission from you goes right in the garbage, I don’t read it. I warn people who might work with you and tell them you did this. I tell people: “If you work with this person, I will not work with you again. So if you think you might need something from me in the future, don’t be seen with them.”

And thirdly, You are poisoning the well. Because hear me out, the version of the book you submit may not be the version that sees print, and you’re not thinking of all the things that might change. We’re not a printer, we’re a publisher. We have input.

What if, hear me out, what if you send in a massive fantasy epic the size of Lord of the Rings or something, and we love it. But just like Tolkien’s publisher, we say “let’s split it into three and release them a year apart”… not know you’ve self-published the tome yourself, so all the spoilers are out there. And try to take it down all you want, once it’s on the internet, it’d out there. Now you have a problem.

Or what if there are errors in the book that our editor catches? We will be weirded out when customers start calling and saying “there’s a typo on page 125” only for us to go looking and it’s not there, because that customer has picked up a version of the book you put out yourself without our knowing. In the same vein, what if you put it out with your cover, like in the example above, and we hate it? Now that’s out there, that will always come up in Google searches, maybe even before ours. We’re going to be upset.

And here’s one that uncomfortable to think about but you have to: what if you put something truly offensive in your book? We all have blind spots. What if you put in a slur without realizing it was a slur (the slur referencing the Roma people is a common one)? What if you took a scene of violence too far, and the publisher asked it to be scaled back? What if you accidentally violated copyright in some way (using song lyrics is a popular one because they’re used all the time in media and people don’t understand the gymnastics that happen behind the scenes to make that happen)? What if we put in your contract “we will publish this as long as you take X out, but you already have a version of the book with X in it out there and have not told us?” Now we’re going to get all the blowback of having worked with an author who did this offensive thing, even though we had made the edit.

And like the last example, I need to make this as clear as possible: if you did the last example and didn’t tell me there was already a version out there with that material in it, I will sue you. The contract will be written in such a way that violating it will have monetary penalties. I will get my money back from this project, one way or the other.

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So that’s it, and hopefully this at least gives people some idea of some things not to do when soliciting publishers. I know I must come off awful in this, but please understand, its years of this boiling up. And a lot of the time  we understand: it doesn’t say this anywhere online, there’s nowhere to get this information. Well, now there is.

Never Look Back.