Before You Send Your Work to Publishers

Before sending your manuscript off to publishers, your success on getting published all depends on the tasks you undertake to perfect your manuscript. From the moment you complete your book, no matter how perfect it might seem to you, you have to go back and revise the material. In many cases, one revision wouldn’t be enough and you can take heart that many successful authors make quite a number of revisions on what they created before sending it to their publisher.

The next step is editing and you might like to get someone to edit your work for you. If you think you can look at your own work objectively and edit it just as objectively, go ahead. But know that many writers who go about editing their own work get rejected. Many people work as independent editors and if you only send your work to them, it will fare far better when you’ve submitted it to publisher. At any rate, you’ll get valuable insight about how the publishing industry works and you’ll have a professional helping you improve what you’ve written. Basically, they know what agents are looking for and they know what publishers are looking for.

So your material is perfect but even after you’ve revised it and edited it, you’re not ready to send your manuscript just yet. Especially if you’re doing this for the first time, you have to do your research about agents. Sending your manuscript to anyone isn’t a guarantee that you’ll get published. You might like to look into what genre these agents and publishers specialize in. You’ll get more information on that with the Writer’s Market 2011. Also, it will provide you with information about writing a synopsis for your book, query letter and so on.

You might be looking to get published with a top tier publishing house. On this note, you have to have an agent first because they only work with agents. As for small publishing houses, you can work with them directly. When everything on this list is said and done, you can start choosing from your list of publishers who you want to work with.