Posted by Justine Solomons on 25 March 2024, in Byte Experts, News
Revise and revise. You should only contact publishers when your manuscript has been buffed up. This is likely to mean going over it lots of times, rewriting again and again to get the language just right. Upping the quality by a few per cent each time. Your manuscript doesn’t have to be finished, but at least half of it should be pretty polished.
- Be pithy. Publishers receive a lot of submissions, especially for biography and memoir. Introduce your book with brevity and verve (but not hyperbole). If you can’t excite an editor with what you have written and why it should be published, they wonder if you really have written a great book.
- Send the right information. Publishers differ but at Canbury Press we like to receive an email outlining the book and three attachments: a) the proposal, with different sections setting out the synopsis, competitors, biography and marketing ideas; b) a table of contents; and c) three chapters, preferably the first three.
- Tell the publisher who you are. Your biography should cover the major points of your upbringing, education and career. Include any previous books and any journalistic contacts and social media presence which might help with promotion. Don’t be shy in vaunting your credentials, but don’t exaggerate them either; publishers will cross-check the information.
- Think of the market. Many non-fiction writers start from the position: ‘I want to write a book about Topic A,’ but sometimes don’t consider what kind of readers might want to know about Topic A and how many of them there are. So: who are you writing your book for and why would they buy it? A great question to ask yourself is: Where in a bookshop would my title sit?
- Keep going. What is wrong for one publisher may be right for another. A publisher may reject your book for reasons that have little to do with its merits (for instance, they are about to publish something similar). Many successful writers have had their manuscripts rejected. Millions of children would have had a duller upbringing if JK Rowling had quit at her twelfth rejection. If you believe in your book, show it.
Martin Hickman is Editor-in-Chief of Canbury Press and its imprints Acropolis Publishing and Haythorp Books, all of which specialise in non-fiction. Email submissions@canburypress.com
