A Publisher's Conversation with Authors: Preparing a Book for Submisson

 

(photo by Frank Perez)

It is Tuesday. Time to tall turkey. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side.

Today's topic is about preparing a book for submission. We are talking here about the final version that gets sent to the publisher (after the inquiry and proposal, after the acceptance and contract). There are reasons that you would want to take the extra time to make sure that the book is just as ship-shape as possible:

• Most publishers have a clause in the contract that allows them to turn down a book after submission if it is not of good enough quality.

• The cleaner the book, the less expensive for the publisher to copyedit -- should you want to submit another book later, you will be remembered as a quality author.
• The cleaner the book, the faster it makes it through the production process and onto bookshelves. This can be important, especially if you want to have the seminal work in a field.

 So, how do you make your book ship-shape? Here are some tips:

• Proofread your work for typos, grammar errors, punctuation, and clarity. Set it aside for a week and then proofread it again.
• Run your work through your spell checker.
• Send the book to several friends -- I like to use a dozen of them since they all notice different kinds of things -- and ask them to redline mistakes and highlight things that are not clear. Then, adjust your text.
• If you have the funds to hire a professional copyeditor, you can do so although it is not necessary if you put in the extra work yourself and can find capable friends to provide unbiased feedback.
• Finally, check your final manuscript against the publisher's specs, including the style manual being used. 

Want to read more on this topic? Check out this resource for formatting manuscripts.

Lesson for today's Tuesday talk: Take the extra time needed to make your book clean of errors.
You cannot do this alone. You will need the help of others. You can buy help, i.e. pay a professional copyeditor. Or, you can ask 6-10 friends to read the manuscript and point out errors and lack of clarity.

Read more posts about publishing HERE.

The Tuesday talks reflect real discussions between the management of MSI Press LLC and our own authors or those would-be authors who come through our doors but don't make the cut--yet. If you have a topic you would like addressed, leave the question in the comment section. Chances are, in our 17 years of publishing first-time and experiences authors, we have had a conversation with one of our authors that we can share with you.