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Publishing Suggestions
Getting Your Manuscript Ready to Submit
What you do before you submit your manuscript can save you time and money. If your material is hard to read or poorly organized the publisher will have to either return it to you or guess at what you meant or how you wanted it to look. But this is supposed to be your book, so you need to sit down and think about some things before you rush to your publisher with a sheaf of poorly presented material.
First get everything together that you want to include in your book. If you have written a novel, or anything of that nature, then you already have most of what you will need. If your book will be a book of poems, short stories, essays, or perhaps a family history, then perhaps now is a good time to decide what you want to be sure to include, what you would like to include if you have space, and what you don't want very badly if at all.
Now go through those items that you want to be sure to include. Is each item on a separate page so that they can be easily sorted and changed around as you work with your material? If not, take the time to retype them, or cut them apart and tape them to separate 8-1/2" X 11" pieces of paper.
If your material is not typed or printed, be sure that the publisher will accept material that is not typed.
Don't forget about the dedication, introduction, table of contents, publishing credits, a biography, a photograph, graphics, and what you might like on the cover. While the publisher may be able to help you with all of these, things will go smoother if you have thought about them ahead of time and know what you want. Then it will be your book, done the way you want it.
In Search Of Perfection
Just The Way You Want It
Sometimes it helps to have another book or several books that look the way you want your book to look.
If more than one font is available, choose fonts now. Decide if you do or do not want graphics or photographs. Get what you want, but keep it simple.
Ordering your material the way you want it to appear
Think about how you want your material to be organized in your book. If you have many poems, you may want to sort them by subject matter or style, or some other criteria. The same is true of short stories, essays or other short items.
This may seem like it isn't important, but it really is. After the material has been composed, it is frustrating, time consuming and expensive to change things around.
Worst of all, changes after proofreading may result in errors in the final copy. The more data is moved about, the more chance there is of material being duplicated or lost, or effected by equipment malfunction.
It would be embarrassing to read a poem about a clown under a sad poem about the death of your grandmother or the tragic death of a schoolmate in an accident.
Or how about an intimate love poem next to a poem for children.
While your publisher may notice inadvertent mistakes like this, you know your work better than they do, and you should prevent anything like this from happening.
Count Your Lines and Sort Your Material Again
Every page of your book will have room for a specific number of lines. Start at page one, and assign every item a page number with no more than the allotted number of lines. In an 8-1/2 X 5-1/2 sized book, 40 lines fit comfortably, 44 lines just barely fit, and 46 lines should be used only if necessary. If you have sorted your items in smaller groups, you can fit two short items together on one page.
If your material is prose, this is not as critical, and you can just order your items sequentially.
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