Download - Write Submission Guidelines That Get Results
© 2011 Pubmission. All rights reserved. Page 1
What Are Your Goals?
Your submission guidelines are one
of the most important pieces of
marketing literature you produce, yet
many publishers and agents we’ve
encountered do not treat them as such.
They put little thought into readability,
visibility, or audience. They think of
writing guidelines as a chore or a
necessary evil. And the last thing they
want to do is spend time revising them.
But an effective guidelines page is a
powerful, proactive tool that saves you
time and frustration down the road.
Many publishers we talk to complain
that a high percentage of the submis-
sions they get have nothing to do with
what they publish. Our recommenda-
tion is to first take a look at your
guidelines page and make sure that
your expectations are simple and clear,
with a specific call-to-action.
If you’re about to write (or rewrite)
your submission guidelines, it’s vital
that you first define your goals.
Do you want to:
• improve your company’s
visibility?
• reduce the number of submis-
sions you receive?
• foster a productive relationship
with future writers?
Recruiting writers isn’t that much
different from marketing a website. A
website owner might love to check his
site’s analytics to see how many visits it
has received, but if it’s an e-commerce
site and no one is buying what he’s
selling, the number of visits he gets is
useless.
The problem may be that his
marketing copy is unclear or cluttered.
He hasn’t done his keyword research or
posted a strong enough call-to-action.
HOW TO WRITE
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
THAT GET
POSITIVE RESULTS
© 2011 Pubmission. All rights reserved. Page 2
He’s attracting the wrong visitors. Even
though a large number of people are
visiting his site, it does him little good if
none of them are buying customers.
The same goes for the submissions
process. You might be
attracting a large
number of submissions,
your filing cabinets or
the corner of your office
might be overflowing
with manila envelopes.
But it does you little
good to spend all that
time looking for a
needle in the haystack
just to come up empty.
The truth is, if
you’re educating your
writers on exactly what
you’re looking for using
a powerful, concise
selling message (yes,
you’re selling to them),
then the slush pile will
become more produc-
tive for you. Sure, you’ll
almost certainly get the odd manuscript
that has nothing to do with what you’re
seeking, but if you can reduce the
percentage of those mismatches,
wouldn’t it be worth your time to revise
your guidelines?
Visibility
Many publishing houses have now
closed their doors to unagented submis-
sions. But if you’re reading this, you
might not be at that point; you’re not
ready to jeopardize your
firsthand connection to
new writers. Not yet…
You might also be
cringing at the thought
of increasing your
exposure to writers
because you’re equating
visibility with the
number of submissions
you receive. But make
no mistake: If you’re a
successful publisher,
you won’t stay invisible.
If you’re producing
quality content, if you
make a deal that’s
announced on
Publisher’s Lunch, if
one of your books is
marketed on a radio
interview or at a book
signing, writers will find you. It’s
inevitable.
So you have two choices: sacrifice
your direct connection to new writers, or
educate them. Let them know exactly
what you expect. And make this
information readily available.
Courtesy of Cory Doctorow
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Writers Are Readers, Too
There’s a danger involved with closing
your doors to submissions or offering
unrealistic submission requirements:
frustrating large numbers of writers can
backfire. After all, they’re writers! In this
age of social networking and easy access
to digital soap boxes, upsetting those who
are proficient at, or at least passionate
about writing can be detrimental to your
image.
Writers who want to submit to you
might also be some of your best custom-
ers, customers who actually look at the
publisher’s logo on the spine. They’re
likely interested in the topics you publish
and might have some influence over
other potential customers. By adopting a
reasonable submissions policy, you have
a better chance of converting these
writers into evangelists rather than
detractors. Many of them will even
forgive you for rejecting them.
That’s why you need an effective
submissions policy that invites and
educates your writers.
The Submissions Funnel
Your company’s success is almost
completely dependent upon the quality of
the content you produce. Though market
shifts, a poor economy, or high produc-
tion costs can all affect your bottom line,
in publishing, intellectual property is
what you sell. If you restrict the flow of
submissions, if you cut yourself off from
quality writers because you’re afraid that
you’ll get bombarded with manila
envelopes, your content will suffer.
Think of the submissions process as
something akin to a funnel. Wide at the
top, narrow at the bottom. You might
already have your guidelines posted with
a popular listing service such as Writer’s
Market or Publishers Marketplace, but
have you thought of other venues to
advertise your needs?
• Are your guidelines posted on your
Facebook or LinkedIn pages?
• Are you using SEO related to the
genres you publish on your web
guidelines?
• Do you have a printed submissions
brochure that you can hand out at
trade shows?
• Do your acquisitions editors write a
blog and grant interviews to other
bloggers?
The Submissions Funnel
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The more information you have out
there to let writers know what you
expect, the better. The trick then, is to
craft guidelines that will narrow down
the number of writers moving through
your funnel, so that the submissions
reaching your slush pile accurately match
your needs.
Sample Guidelines
Let’s look at the typical structure of a
submission guidelines page:
Company info
In addition to telling writers what you
publish, don’t be afraid to shed some
light on how your editorial process
works. Tell them how long it takes to
produce a book from initial manuscript
to distribution. Tell them how many
editors you have on staff. Tell them what
they can expect from you in terms of
editing, layout, and marketing.
Genres
Be as specific as possible about what
genres you publish. If you’re fuzzy about
this, the percentage of submissions that
don’t match your needs will increase. For
example, if you’re a publisher of K-8
educational materials, don’t say that you
publish children’s literature. You’ll find
yourself swamped with picture books
that have nothing to do with your
publishing plan.
Specific/current needs
Don’t be afraid to let writers know
what you’re currently hoping to add to
your list. Some might worry that this will
show your hand to the competition, but
the potential gain of a great new author
far outweighs the result of a competitor
trying to jump on your bandwagon. If
someone tries to copy you, take it as a
compliment.
Contract/fee arrangement
Again, though you might worry that
you’re revealing too much about how
your company operates, contract terms
are first and foremost on authors’ minds.
They want to know if it will be worth
their time to submit to you, so let them
know if you offer a flat fee or a royalty,
and don’t be afraid to give a range for
both. They’re going to find out eventu-
ally, and the fewer surprises the better
when it comes to contract negotiations.
Tips/tastes
Though your guidelines may cite the
genres you publish and your current
needs, it will help considerably during
the submission review process if you
share with writers a few clues to what you
like and don’t like. Let them know your
tastes, and it doesn’t hurt to use this
section to let some of your company’s
personality shine through.
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Format requirements
Telling writers how you expect them
to format their submissions can be a
tightrope walk. If you’re too permissive,
you’ll spend more time trying to
determine what you’re getting in each
submission. If you require submitters to
jump through too many hoops, you’ll
discourage writers (good and bad) from
taking the time to submit to you. And
you’ll find that a good number of
submissions won’t follow your rules
anyway.
But be sure to explain clearly how
you want writers to send work to you
(i.e., through the mail, e-mail, website,
etc.) and if they need to include a cover
letter and SASE. Think of this as your
call-to-action. Just as in your marketing
literature, it needs to be easily visible.
Response
deadline
Be realistic in your
estimates of when
you’ll respond, but
assure writers that
you will respond to
every submission.
Even if you tell writers that a SASE is
required, it’s generally a good practice to
respond even to submissions without
them. (We won’t tell if you won’t.) It
takes much more time to respond to an
angry author via phone or e-mail than it
does to put a stamp on an envelope.
Common Mistakes
Too much text
Though it seems to run counter to
what you might expect, the more text
and requirements you have for submis-
sions on your site, the less likely it is that
you’ll get what you’re looking for.
Why? Put yourself in the writer’s
position. Submitting to publishers is a
tedious, painstaking process with a low
chance of reward. Putting too many
roadblocks in your guidelines will deter
just as many good writers as bad. Why
go through the hassle? they might ask.
There are plenty of other publishers out
there who don’t require a ten-page
marketing analysis formatted in Courier
12-point font with no simultaneous
submissions.
Too many stipulations will only result
in an influx of submissions from authors
who are submitting to you for the sake of
getting their work out there—and they
probably didn’t bother to read your
guidelines thoroughly, or at all.
In short, don’t put unnecessary
impediments in front of good quality
writers who might not have hours to
invest in submitting to you. You can be
specific about what type of material you
want, but be succinct and be reasonable.
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No headlines
Your submission guidelines should be
written just as you would write any other
piece of marketing copy—with the
understanding that your readers have
limited time and attention spans. If your
guidelines are on the web (and they
should be!), then you should be taking
SEO into account along with basic
readability.
Central to this is including clearly
worded, short headlines. These help
writers navigate easily and quickly from
section to section (outlined above) and
also build your visibility on search-engine
rankings.
Large blocks of text
Again, we are always amazed by the
guidelines pages we visit that are not
written for readability. If you hide key
information in large chunks of impene-
trable text, it makes it much less likely
that a writer will find it and submit the
work you’re looking for. In addition to
headlines, use short sentences, concise
language, and bullet points.
Hiding your personality
Writing your guidelines in a style that
reflects your list. If you publish humor
books, your guidelines shouldn’t be dry
as dirt. You want to attract writers who
share your sensibilities so make sure that
your personality, or brand, comes
through loud and clear.
No simultaneous submissions
Some publishers still ask that they get
exclusive rights to a submission (but
their numbers are dwindling). They
might have many good reasons for doing
this, but we believe that saying no to
simultaneous submissions is a deterrent
you can’t afford. It may reduce the
number of manuscripts you receive, but
it may also reduce the percentage of
quality submissions in your slush pile.
Unless an experienced writer wants
to submit to you more than anything else
in the world, there’s a good likelihood
that she’ll either pass on submitting to
you or send something to you—and five
other publishers—anyway. It’s also a
difficult policy to enforce, and most
writers know that. However, it’s a good
idea to ask writers to tell you if they’ve
signed a contract with another publisher
before they hear back from you.
Poor visibility (where’s the
link?)
If you believe that your submissions
are a valuable resource, then make sure
that the link to your submission
guidelines is in plain sight on your home
page and elsewhere.
Don’t hide the guidelines in an “About
Us” or a “Contact” menu. The more
impediments you put in front of writers
interested in sending you work, the more
likely it is that you’ll get submissions that
don’t match your needs.
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Metrics
Are your submission guidelines
working the way you’d like them to?
There’s no way to know unless you record
some key metrics. We recommend that
you create a log of every submission you
receive in either a spreadsheet or
database file. In addition to the basics,
such as author name, title, and contact
info, measuring the following areas can
help you determine if your message is
getting across in your guidelines—and if
further revision is necessary.
Trends/keywords
Your slush pile can reveal some
important data regarding current and
future trends in your industry. You might
even discover some new buzzwords that
haven’t presented themselves to you
through your market research. For each
submission, record a few keywords to
describe it. This is also helpful info to
share with your writers via a blog post.
It’s important to let your writers see what
the competition is up to.
Review time
This is perhaps the most important
metric to track, and most publishers fail
to do so. Ask your editors to record how
long it takes them to review submissions,
either per submission or session. Then
review this figure each month to see how
much of your time the slush pile is
consuming. If the time is going down, see
if this corresponds to a recent revision of
your guidelines. Tracking this figure
throughout the year can also help you
with scheduling. Some months might be
consistently busier for submissions than
others. Knowing this in advance can help
you prevent a backlog.
Success ratio
The number of publishable works that
actually come from the slush pile will
likely be very low. But that doesn’t
discount the value of keeping a close eye
on this figure. Your success ratio can
provide some great insight into the
effectiveness of your submission
guidelines.
Match percentage
You might also want to track the
number of submissions that are
completely inappropriate for your
publishing company. Hopefully, after
revamping your guidelines, you’ll see this
figure drop dramatically.
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Don’t Dread the Slush Pile
Even if you’re still getting more
submissions than you can handle, there
are tools out there that can help.
Pubmission is designed not only to
help you sort and search your submis-
sions online, it also works to educate
writers on how to submit to you. It shows
them if their submissions match up with
your needs and lets you use the site to
create an effective guidelines page.
And with our staff of experienced
editor coaches, we can help push writers
in the right direction so you don’t have to
do all the heavy lifting.
Check out Pubmission at
www.pubmission.com.
Tell Us What You Think
We’d like this article to be a working
document that evolves with the industry
and your feedback.
To help us achieve this, your opinion
is always welcome and necessary. So let
us know what you think about this
article. Send your comments to
Thanks and good luck!
The Pubmission Staff
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