Finding a Publisher

Q: My daughter/son/niece/coworker/friend has written several short stories/poems/essays that I think are excellent. Could you give her/him any help in finding a publisher?

A: I don't want to be discouraging, but frankly, there aren't a whole lot of commercial markets for short fiction (there are some, mostly in small literary magazines; some also for genre shorts, like fantasy or crime), and while there are a fair number of markets for poetry, they mostly don't pay anything.

Now, while reading the following, bear in mind that I am not a poet, and I never write short stories, except on the rare occasions when someone commissions one for an anthology (which means I've never really had to sell the stories; someone came asking me to write one). I do, however, know quite a few poets. Of the three or four dozen that I know personally, two of them get paid now and then, and one actually lists his profession as "poet" on his passport (but his wife is a banker, too).

A lot of people write poetry. It's fun for them, or it's emotionally fulfilling, it feels easier than writing fiction, because they feel there are fewer "rules" or constraints, and--very important--you can write a poem a heck of a lot faster than you can write a book.

This is all perfectly fine, but it does mean that there are ten zillion people out there with a backpack full of poems. Competition, in other words.

OK. Last time you went into a big bookstore, did you race right to the Poetry section? Er...was there a Poetry section? If there was, how did it compare, size-wise, to the sections devoted to Mystery, Romance, and Fiction?

You see the point, I trust. A lot of people like to write poetry, but there aren't all that many who chiefly read poetry. I mean, everybody likes a good poem now and then, but most folks haven't read a whole book of poetry since encountering Kahlil Gibran as college freshmen. What this means is, no matter how great a poet you are, there is not a huge commercial market for poetry.

This doesn't mean you can't get poetry published. It just means it's very, very difficult to get paid for having your poetry published. There are books, such as Poet's Market, which are analogous to Writer's Market (which itself has a section on poetry, I think), which will give you details of those magazines and publishers who accept poetry submissions. Most are small literary or poetry-only magazines, and they mostly pay in copies--meaning, if they accept one of your poems, they'll mail you five copies of the magazine so you can show your friends you got published. A few do pay, but they don't pay a lot.

Now, a word of caution. Because there are a lot of people who write poetry and would like to publish it, and because there are not a lot of commercial opportunities, some rather unscrupulous companies run poetry "contests," promising publication in their anthology as a "prize." Except everybody's a winner. And they will publish your poem--in 6-point type, buried in an enormous volume of badly-printed poetry--but they want you to buy one or more copies of this anthology, usually at a fairly hefty price--shall we say, $49.95 or so?

If somebody offers to publish your poem, but expects you to pay them, this is probably a scam. If you just want your poetry in a book, so you can give copies to your family at Christmas, you'd be better off having it printed and bound at Kinko's or Alphagraphics, or--if you want a higher-quality, hardbound book--check the Yellow Pages or the Web for "subsidy publishers." You pay them and they give you a nice book, but it's straight-forward business, not publishing in the editor/submission/payment sense of the word.

Now, as I say, I'm not a poet, and if you are, you'd be well advised to look for material that addressed poets' concerns directly. In terms of short stories, there are guides to the markets that accept these; check the reference section of your bookstore or library for Writer's Market, Literary Marketplace, and other such guides. These will list editors who accept these sorts of submissions. By and large, you don't need an agent for short fiction, and it's difficult to get one, if that's all you write--simply because short stories mostly don't pay enough for it to be worth an agent's labor in placing them.

I do, however, know a few things first-hand about writing novels. And so, on to the next question-

Q: How do I go about finding a publisher for my [fill-in-the-genre] fiction manuscript?

A: Well, there are basically two ways: either 1) you get a literary agent, who will try to find a publisher for you (see January Writer's Corner for "How to Find an Agent"), or 2) you seek out and contact publishers yourself.

If you're going to do it yourself, you either 1) go to a bookstore and look for books that are the sort of thing you're writing (gritty mysteries, sweet romance, mystical literary fiction, autobiography), and take note of which publishers are currently publishing this sort of stuff, and/or 2) go to a bookstore or library and look in the Reference section for books called Writer's Market or Literary Marketplace (in the US), or The Writers and Artists Workbook (in the UK). These books are published in new editions each January, and include listings of all the publishers the editors could find, with basic guidelines and contact information provided for each, arranged in major classifications: magazine publishers, book publishers, sports publishers, etc.

These listings usually will tell you what general sorts of manuscripts that publisher handles, what length manuscripts (if there is a length limit) they prefer, any guidelines or limitations on content, how much they pay (in general), whether they will accept unagented manuscripts, whether you should send them a query letter first, a synopsis with sample chapters, or a whole manuscript, whether they accept or desire photographs with the piece (this is for magazine pieces, usually, rather than books), which rights they want to purchase, and the name or names of editors at that publishing company to whom you should address queries and manuscripts. As a bonus, these books also always include brief, clear essays on How to Format a Manuscript, How to Write a Query Letter, and other helpful tips on submitting manuscripts.

If you want to do further research on a given publisher, you can go to the library and look through back issues of Publisher's Weekly, which is just what it sounds like--a weekly magazine devoted to the publishing industry. Browsing through this can be very instructive, in terms of giving you a notion as to what kinds of books various publishers handle, and some of the concerns publishers may have, in terms of marketing, publicity, distribution, and so on. This is probably not information you'll need immediately, but it will help to give you some familiarity with the publishing industry--which is one screwy business, let me tell you. OK. So you do your research and you pick one or more publishers to approach. How do you approach one?

Well, unless you've met an editor personally (which you might do, if you attend some writers conferences where agent/editor appointments are available) and s/he has already told you to send a synopsis or manuscript, you normally write a query letter.

This is just what it sounds like. It's a brief letter--usually about a page, never more than two--that explains very briefly what kind of book you've written, what it's about (you don't give the whole plot here; that's what a synopsis is for. In the query letter, you want to give the concept or premise of the book), and--if applicable--a tiny bit about you, the writer.

OK, so you write your query letter, and send it to one or more of the editors you've picked out as being good prospects. Now we get into a consideration of that bugaboo called "multiple submissions." What that means is that you send queries or manuscripts to several different publishers at once. Publishers don't like this--naturally not; they'd much rather have you send it to them and then wait while they make up their minds. They don't want to compete with other publishers--and will often say that they don't accept multiple submissions, giving the impression that if they find out you've been multiply submitting, they'll hunt you down, break your knees, and make sure you're never published anywhere.

Hogwash. So they don't like it. Literary agents almost always submit to multiple publishers, for the excellent reason that they don't want to wait a year or more for an answer before they send a submission to the next publisher on the list. They'd rather get it over with fast, pro or con. All right. Now, there's a balance here among what's desirable for you, as the writer, good manners toward the agents or publishers, and common sense all around.

If you're sending a complete, unsolicited manuscript to a publisher--i.e., to the slush pile--there's no guarantee whatever as to when an editor will get to your manuscript, and it would undoubtedly irk an editor to read a great manuscript, rush to the phone to make an offer--only to discover that it was sold to another house six months earlier.

So, if you're sending a manuscript, should you send it to only one publisher, wait to hear, then--if it's rejected--send it to another? Well, that's what publishers would like you to do, but it sounds like a great way to waste years of your life, to me.

Personally, I strongly recommend having a literary agent. Nobody thinks they shouldn't make multiple submissions. But if you don't want to do this, or can't get one--or are in the position of approaching agents initially, rather than editors--then use common sense, tempered by good manners.

I.e., if you have several good prospects--be they agents or editors--then there is nothing unethical about sending all of them query letters, describing your project. Allow a decent interval--say, 4-6 weeks--to elapse for replies. Some of them probably won't reply. Others will say no. These you don't worry about anymore. The only real problem--and there are worse problems, believe me--occurs if you get a positive response, but it isn't from the top person on your list. Say, for the sake of argument, that one agent writes you back, asking for an exclusive on your manuscript.

An "exclusive" means that the agent is asking you to let him or her consider the manuscript for a period of time, during which you agree not to show it to anyone else. (This is not an unreasonable request, but if you grant it, be sure to specify--in writing--a set period during which the exclusive option will be in effect. Four to eight weeks is reasonable; anything longer than three months is not.)

All right. This agent is not the one you were particularly hoping to hear from, and the one who is your top prospect hasn't replied to you yet, either pro or con. So what do you do?

Well, opinions may differ, but my personal recommendation would be to play it pretty straight. I.e., write again to your first-choice agent (call him or her X; then we needn't worry about all that gender-neutral/him/her stuff) and explain that another agent has asked you for an exclusive, but that you are still interested in hearing X's opinion of your work--is X interested in your manuscript?

If nothing else, this may provoke a prompt rejection, which at least makes your next step clearer. However, bear in mind that publishing, like every other industry I can think of, is highly competitive. Point being that nothing makes a project seem quite as desirable as the news that someone else is interested in it.

And what if you've agreed to give one agent an exclusive, but then another--possibly more desirable, possibly not--replied to your query and asks to see the book?

Well, again, I'd advise honesty. Tell the second agent that someone else (and you needn't name names) has an X-week exclusive on the manuscript. If you're interested in the second agent (call him/her Y), tell Y that you're interested, and after the exclusive period has elapsed, you'd be glad to send the book (this is why you set a specified period for an exclusive; don't just wait for X to get around to reading it in the fullness of time. Time can be pretty full, when you're waiting for an answer). Then when the exclusive does expire, tell X (assuming that X does like the book, and offers you representation) that you're pleased X likes it, but you would like to talk to someone else who's expressed some interest in your original query before making a decision.

Remember that you are employing an agent. They say whether or not they want to work for you, which is what makes the process seem like an audition--but you are still hiring them to work for you, just as you hire (in essence) a doctor, lawyer, or exterminator. It's perfectly reasonable for you to interview more than one lawyer, or call more than one window-cleaner, before making a decision; it's perfectly reasonable for you to talk to more than one agent--always assuming that more than one wants to talk to you, which may or may not be the case. OK, the situation is similar with regard to publishers, but the issue of timing makes a substantial difference. It's reasonable to expect an agent to read a query letter within a few weeks to a couple of months; it's not reasonable to expect the same promptness from an editor with a 900-page manuscript.

Now, I've seen editor's slush-piles. They're enormous. Every editor's office I've been in is absolutely lined with paper, floor to ceiling. Editors are conscientious, hard-working, and read all the time, but flesh and blood has its limits. What this means is, even if the editor loves your manuscript, he or she may not get to it for several months. (A note on slush-piles. I've not only seen a few, I've seen a few of the manuscripts in them. The bad news is, there are lots of them. The good news is, about 95% of what's in a slush-pile is illegible, illiterate, or completely unsuitable for that publisher. People really do submit manuscripts written in Day-Glow marker on yellow pads, or send their grandmother's memoirs of the Oregon Trail to a publisher that specializes in cookbooks. Naturally, these manuscripts are going to get rejected--so the competition is perhaps not as stiff as it originally appears. However, it still takes the editor time to look at each manuscript and write a polite note to the author.)

So, what can you do to improve the response time from a publisher? Two things I can think of: 1) send a query letter first. Query letters are much faster to read than manuscripts. If an editor replies, wanting either a synopsis plus sample chapters, or a whole manuscript, you can put "Requested Material" on the envelope, and that should move it up in the pile. or 2) Get An Agent.