Advice on Submitting to Epubs
You can ignore my advice if you wish. Free advice is worth what you paid for it in some cases. This particular well-meaning gem of “wisdom” is from my own experience. YMMV (Your mileage may vary.)
Lena’s Unbreakable Rule: Read the submission guidelines and follow them as if they were gospel. They are. Don’t submit a sweet romance to an erotic publisher. Don’t submit in Comic Sans font when they want Book Antiqua. Follow the rules.
Rule #1: FINISH the story first! I don’t give a rat’s ass what the RWA says. The RWA is focused on print. Print pubs have two speeds -slow and snail’s pace. Epubs operate at lightning speed in comparison. Fastest reaction time I’ve heard so far? 15 minutes from the time the author hit send on a query to a letter coming back requesting the full. Get the picture? Yes, most of the time the turnaround is a month to three months. Are you willing to risk it? Follow the Boy Scout motto and be prepared.
Rule #2: Stop sweating the frigging synopsis. Editors with any brain (and those are the ones you want, right?) know we hate them. They are merciful. Epub editors don’t need or want three pages of synopsis. A page will do nicely, in many cases. Just do a nice overview. If you’re a plotter like me, this is easy. Sit your plot plan down in front of you, and type about a paragraph or so for each plot point or chapter. Don’t hide the plot twists, solve the whole thing, and wrap it up in a bow.
Rule #3: Use spell check/grammar check and then get at least three people to look over your manuscript for errors. No, I don’t mean your mother or your husband, unless they are professionals with an excellent command of English and knowledge of the market. Ask one male and two females. At least one of those should be a reader of erotic romance who likes the genre you have written. Why the male? Because males like action and plot as a rule. They won’t be caught up in the emotion of the story. The females will tell you if it’s engaging enough emotionally.
Rule #4: Just do it. Stop making such a big deal out of hitting the Send key. This may be my biggest rule of all: If you don’t ask, you don’t get. Ever. Many writers scared of “no” answers, keep tweaking their work until they destroy the unique nature of their work to total blandness. Perfection is bland and boring. So, once you’ve weeded out the bad spelling and grammar, let one to three people (preferably from your target audience) critique it. Then, fix what they say and send it off in proper format to submissions editors of your target publishers.
When they respond with answers, listen to what they said. “Revise and resubmit” letters SOUND like rejections. They aren’t. They’re tests to see if you can humbly obey and learn from your mistakes to make your work fit the house. Even rejections can say, “While this work doesn’t fit our house, we like your voice. Send us something else you think might work.”
If you’ve done your homework and chose publishers who publish what you write, you will rarely get full “never talk to us again” rejections. (wink)
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Well said Lena. I know you have been in this business for awhile *grins* and any advice the more established authors share is taken under advisement by me since I am still a newbie. Thanks for coming and sharing your advice with us.
Raine D.
I am bookmarking this page. Sound advice. Thank you Lena
Bo
My pleasure, ladies. I’m happy to help, even if I tend to be acerbic.
Great advice, Lena. This one’s going in my files to keep.
Thanks,
Julie