Words of submission wisdom

[annathepiper]

Here are a couple of posts by alg about how the submission process works when you're sending a manuscript out. For those of you who don't already know who she is, she's one of the editors at Tor. Much of what she has to say is therefore Tor-specific, but on the other hand, much of it isn't, so it's good stuff to know in general. Wear your snark glasses when reading Anna's posts. ;)

http://alg.livejournal.com/75231.html
http://alg.livejournal.com/75477.html

(x-posted between my journal and scuzzboppers)

Comments

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

My uncle I was getting suggestions for earlier is so utterly naive about the whole process. He's been getting family pictures that he wants to include. He *adjusts the text* so that when the photos are where he wants them, paragraphs don't break over page breaks. He is spending a *lot* of time messing with this sort of formatting, despite the fact that my mom (a technical editor by trade) has told him that it is completely irrelevant and a waste of his time. Sigh. And if you push him, he gets angry.

[annathepiper]

Your mom's right--if he were to submit that work of his for publication, where he puts the photos is invariably bound to change just because of the entire process of laying out a work for publication. What it looks like on his computer is not at all a good indication of what it would look like in print.

If he feels that proprietary about the formatting, he may want to go a self-publishing route that'll give him more control over that aspect of it.

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

I know that, you know that, SHE knows that... he is stubborn and, as I say, has no clue about these things. I suspect he thinks he will send it to one place, they will say YAY BEST BOOK EVAR and soon it will be on bookstore shelves next to Dave Barry and he will have lots of money coming in to supplement his social security. I fear what's going to happen when he gets his first (second, Nth) rejection letter.

There's other stuff going on with that whole issue, but probably not suitable for me to air in someone else's journal.

[annathepiper]

*nodnod* Well, my offer still stands to check out the panel on the kind of material he's doing, when I get to Writer's Weekend in June. And I can get the names from writersweekend of the agents she mentioned who handle that kind of material. Let me know if that would be helpful. :)

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

The names of the agents would probably be good. I sort of suspect it's not worth your time to go to that particular panel unless there's really nothing else going on that you're interested in at the same time, but we can confer more on that when it gets closer to June.

[annathepiper]

Just to follow up on this, since it's still in my queue of LJ comments--do you still want this information? Let me know. :)

[emmacrew.livejournal.com]

If it's trivial for you to get it, sure.

Apparently my uncle thought I was going to tell him who would publish his book when I though I was giving him a pile of resources on where to find people who might publish his book. I think when it comes to this project he doesn't hear what other people are telling him but instead what he wants to hear, and he was really assholish to my mom in the last couple of months, so I'm sort of not all that inclined to put myself out a whole lot at this point. So don't you put yourself out too much, either. :-)

[annathepiper]

*grin* Gotcha. Yeah, it sounds like he doesn't quite get that if he wants to formally publish the thing, he has to actually sell somebody on the concept. Ah well!

If I find out anything interesting at Writer's Weekend, I'll let you know!