Manuscript Format Guidelines and Why We Care – A Letter from an Editor

Manuscript Format Guidelines and Why We Care – A Letter from an Editor

by | Mar 23, 2017 | Business of publishing, Writing

As a lot of folks here know, in 2016 I started a small publishing company, Falstaff Books. As such, I look through a fair number of manuscript submissions. I don’t read all of them at first, there’s a team of slush readers that do that. But I sometimes poke my head into the slush pile, and I read everything that gets kicked up the food chain to me.

That means I see some truly interesting things done with formatting of documents. Despite the fact that we publish pretty clear submission guidelines on our website (click the big red button that says “submissions” to see these), we’ll occasionally get some manuscripts that do not follow the guidelines. I don’t know if this is ignorance, hubris, or just stupidity that causes people to ignore the clearly stated guidelines, but it will frequently result in a rejection without the submission ever being read.

Here’s why – I have enough books under contract to not accept another title for publication before 2020, and we’d still be really busy. 

We are a very small press. We do not pay advances at this point. We do not have national bookstore placement yet. We have a very small media footprint. We have won no major awards for our books, and have only a few thousand people on our newsletter and social media reach. And we still have so many amazing books in the pipeline that if I didn’t accept another book for two years, we’d still be able to publish multiple books every month for the next three years.

If we are that inundated with talented writers and quality manuscripts at this point in our evolution, how backed up do you think places like Apex or Angry Robot or Baen are? Those folks have been around much longer and have much better distribution, so if you think they aren’t way busier than I am, you’re smoking the good shit.

If you mail me the good shit, I might forgive some of your formatting stupidity.

So that’s what it boils down to with some guidelines – give an editor the shit they want in the format they want it, because doing anything else gives them an excuse to reject your manuscript and move on the next amazing submission in the pile.

But I’m going to go point by point in our guidelines and tell you exactly why they exist. So you don’t sit there and say “That Hartness guy is just an arbitrary asshat that hates kittens and rejected my manuscript because I mailed a hard copy in on cat stationary.”

First off, we only accept email submissions. I don’t have a PO Box, I don’t want a PO Box, and there is no way in hell I want you crazy fuckers showing up at my door with rose-scented perfumed manuscripts.

Secondly, fuck you, I love cats.

See? That’s my cat. In a Bojangle’s box. He’s fucking adorable.

So here are the guidelines, pulled straight from our website as of today, March 22, 2017.

All submissions should be sent to info@falstaffbooks.com with a query letter and the requested sample, sized by format as indicated above. Should your work be accepted by another publisher during the 45-60 day period of your manuscript’s consideration, we would appreciate you letting us know.

If I have met you personally, you can send it to my email address. Otherwise, use the main email address. This is because all the editors have access to it and everyone checks that email inbox. That means that your manuscript gets seen and evaluated faster. It helps us be more efficient.

Send a query letter. I want to know a little something about you and the book before I dive in. There are a lot of websites out there that will teach you how to write one. They won’t tell you this – if you don’t include anything, I won’t read the submission. I’ll email you a form rejection letter and move along. If you don’t care enough about the book to write a query to get me excited about the book and about working with you, then I don’t care enough to read your query letter. Also, without a query letter it’s just a random email with an attachment. And those get deleted immediately.

Simultaneous submissions are fine, but if the book gets picked up, let me know. That’s just basic courtesy.

Please format your work in Standard Manuscript Format, which is:

  • MSWord documents ONLY (.doc and .docx format)
    • I fucking hate RTF Files. I’m getting old and I need to be able to adjust the size of a document easily. Word lets me do that. I don’t write in Word. I don’t care what you write in. The publishing world works in MSWord, so fucking get a copy of it. Some of the free stuff out there is great, but some of it the formatting looks like a pile of assholes when you transfer it to Word, so you better be able to look at it in Word before you send it. And if you can look at in Word, why not just make it there?
  • 12pt. Times New Roman Font
    • Yes, goddammit, you have to use the right font. I find serif fonts easier to read, and 12-point is about the smallest my old eyes ca handle. When your business card says “Publisher” on it, you can set the rules to make your life easier.
  • 1-inch Margins
    • It makes things look uniform, and gives me some idea of how long your paragraphs will appear on the printed page. It’s a small thing, but the idea of blocks of grey space is something I think about, and at this point if a submission follows traditional guidelines, I get a sense of how dense the text is.
  • Double-Space between lines
    • I mentioned I’m getting old, right? I never expected to survive my twenties, and there are plenty of people who hung out with me who also didn’t expect it. But since I did, and now I’m in my forties, I’m fucking blind. Double-spaced used to be for manual edits, now it’s for old bastards who need help reading.
  • DO NOT INDENT MANUALLY
    • We make a shit ton of ebooks. Ebooks hate hard tabs. So don’t fucking use hard tabs in your document. Gain some facility with the rod processing software and set your preferences to indent the first line of each new paragraph. It’s one of the things you can do when you’re fixing the font and spacing. Someone is going to have to go back through and do this anyway, so you may as well do it from the start. I sure as fuck am not going to do it, so if you send me a manuscript full of manual indents (hard tabs), you’re getting the thing back with a note that says “get rid of all the fucking hard tabs” before edits.
  • Number your pages in the UPPER-RIGHTHAND CORNER starting on the SECOND PAGE
    • Help me keep track of where I am. Again, it’s something you set up at the beginning of a document.
  • Please include your name, email, address, and phone number on the COVER PAGE
    • I would like to know how to get in touch with you, just in case you’re fucking amazing. 
  • CHAPTERS must start on a NEW PAGE.
    • Because that’s how fucking books work. Have you ever fucking read one?

Finally, please wait 45-60 days for our response to your submission. We will request more of your work or send a rejection during that time. Due to the large number of submissions we receive we will be unable to send a personal rejection with each submission, though we will do our best to do so when it comes to novels and novellas.

Those are our guidelines. They’re pretty simple, right? Just follow those, and your shit gets read. Don’t follow them, and you show me that you’re a special fucking snowflake that doesn’t take direction well. It speaks to how you will handle edits, and whether or not you’re a pain in the ass. Here’s a tip – working with a publisher is a multi-year engagement, and nobody wants to work with a pain in the ass for very long. So don’t suck. Put your best foot forward, because your submission is like a first date, and nobody farts at the table on the first date.

So take a fucking Bean-o and enjoy the lobster bisque.

5 Reasons Why Your Story or Novel Gets Rejected, Part 1

5 Reasons Why Your Story or Novel Gets Rejected, Part 1

by | Aug 5, 2016 | Appearances, Business of publishing, Writing

Since opening up Falstaff Books, I’ve been dealing with more submissions than ever. This is awesome, because submissions, particularly unsolicited submissions (or “slush”) is how we build anthologies and a catalog. I, just like every editor and publisher I know, am excited every time I open a query letter and start to read the attachment. I want to find the next amazing book or story, because if I publish it, not only do I get to help bring an amazing book to life, but we all get paid. Remember, a reputable publisher doesn’t make any money unless you make money. Unfortunately, most of what comes in on submission gets rejected, and I want to touch on some of my personal top reasons that your story or novel gets rejected. Some of these are pet peeves, and in a world where my time is incredibly limited, it only takes hitting one hot button to get your book or story rejected. So here, in reverse order, are John’s (and John’s alone) Top 5 Reasons I Will Reject Your Book or Story. I’ll bring you Part 2 next week, because this is running long.

5) Bad Timing – sometimes you honestly just get screwed, and you submit a story or novel (for here on out, I’m just going to call them books) that is too similar to something we just acquired, or too much like something else on the market. For example, if you have a great idea for an urban fantasy series about a male wizard for hire in Indianapolis named Barry Teasden who has a spirit trapped inside a gargoyle on his desk, I’m probably going to pass. Frankly, if you have any kind of urban fantasy detective story, I’m probably going to pass unless it’s 100% goddamn amazing, and there’s something to set it apart from any of the dozens of urban fantasy detective series out there. Including the ones written by the publisher.

But a lot of times you can’t know that we’ve just bought a story in the same genre as yours, or have something on the docket that hits many of the same check marks. For example, it would be hard to know that we aren’t the place to send your “changeling travels to Fairy in search of her absentee parent – hilarity does not ensue” novel, because Changeling’s Fall hasn’t released yet. But it will come out late summer/early fall, and it is the first in a series of four novels about that set of characters. So that’s great for us, because it’s an amazing book, but it’s not great for writers of similar books, because that market is now closed to them.

4) Didn’t Follow the Guidelines – When I worked in the lighting business, I was a middle manager. I had a dozen people that reported to me, and I was responsible for hiring and firing them. One thing I was always looking for in people was a college degree. Not that I thought you needed a degree to do the job, because you certainly don’t. But because having a degree was a shortcut to show an employer that you are capable of sticking with one task for a long time and completing it. Submission guidelines are the same thing.

What am I saying? I’m saying that I’m perfectly capable of quickly reformatting your submission into the typeface, font size, and spacing that is easiest for me to read. Take me less than a minute. And that’s not the point. The point is – are you someone who pays attention to detail, or are you a pain the ass? Do you understand that this is a business relationship, and as such there are ways to do things and ways not to do things, or are you a special friggin’ snowflake that I’m going to have to remind to do everything and hound about missed deadlines?

Submission guidelines are a test, like Van Halen’s green M&Ms. The band never gave a single shit about the color of the M&Ms, but a venue that took the time to either adjust the tour rider to take out the stupid line about the green M&Ms, or took the time to pick out the green M&Ms, was a venue that was paying attention to details. And that’s a venue that’s probably going to have the right safety equipment, the right number of backstage passes for family and guests, and won’t have food in catering that the band is allergic to. A writer who follows the submission guidelines to the letter is probably a writer that will respond to edits quickly and succinctly, will get their shit turned in on time, and generally will behave like a professional.

So follow the goddamn guidelines.

3) Book or Story needs work – Nobody’s first draft is worth a damn. Not mine, not yours, not Neil friggin’ Gaiman’s. So polish your work before you send it out for someone to potentially purchase. Have someone help you polish it. There are critique groups everywhere in the world, including online critique groups for people who live in rural areas and don’t have enough people close by. Use one.

Note – I am not suggesting that you pay an editor to polish a book that you want to sell to a publisher. That’s what we do. It’s our job to handle that level of editorial. But I am saying make friends with writers who are where you are in your career, and work together so that all of you get better. Having someone to put fresh eyeballs on your work will help with things like homonyms and words that either aren’t spelled like you think they’re spelled or words that do not mean what you think they mean.

Here are a few things that will kill the submission before it really gets going. Remember, these are things I don’t care for, but they aren’t universal. They’re pretty close, though. Eliminate these things from your storytelling and it will help you make more money as a writer.

Passive Voice – People need to do things, not have things done to them. Brutus needs to stab Caesar, we don’t need to hear that Caesar was stabbed by Brutus. If your POV character keeps having things done to her, then maybe she shouldn’t be your POV character. Or maybe you should write from a closer POV, so we can understand her reaction to these things better. But get rid of passive voice.

“To Be” – It’s really not to be. The more instances of “was, were, are” you can eliminate from your writing, the more immediate you can make it. Use strong, active verbs to tell the reader what’s going on in the scene. I wasn’t standing by the bar watching the room, I stood by the bar watching the room. I am not sitting at my desk writing a blog post, I sit at my desk writing a blog post. The various conjugations of “to be” distance the reader from the action and reduce the immersion of the character into their surroundings. It blunts the edges of your writing, makes it dull.

Adverbs – You get one per every 50,000 words. You can have them back when you’ve published a million words of fiction. Don’t argue with me, just cut out the annoyingly ever-present and ridiculously repetitive adverbs.

That’s enough for Part 1. I’ll come back next week with the next two pieces of the puzzle – Your Story Starts in the Wrong Place, and You Aren’t a Good Enough Writer (Yet). I figure if these didn’t piss everybody off, those certainly will!

 

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Black Knight #6, Man In Black, is available August 15th, just after my birthday! You can pre-order it now!