Writing the Novel_ From Plot to Print - Lawrence Block [81]
Would you be willing to look at a copy of the manuscript? I’m enclosing herewith a self-addressed stamped envelope for your reply, and I’ll look forward to hearing from you.
I would suggest you write a letter of this sort whether or not the house in question reads unsolicited manuscripts. You’ll get a reply, and a much faster reply than if you submitted a complete manuscript, as it takes rather less time to read a letter than a novel. If the reply tells you thanks but no thanks, that they’re no longer an active market for gothics, that they’re overinventoried with books set in Devon, or any other sort of negative reply, you’ll have saved the cost of submitting your novel to them and the time they’d take returning it.
If the editor agrees to consider the manuscript, you’ve cleared a hurdle. Trefillian House is no longer an over-the-transom submission, no longer pure slush. It’s instead a manuscript an editor has agreed to read.
This doesn’t mean Ms. Wimpole’s going to buy your book. It doesn’t mean you should get your hopes up, only to be deflated when the manuscript comes winging back to you. But it does mean that you’ve improved your odds a little bit.
Your query letter will have served another purpose. In it you’ve already described what you’re sending—not the nature of your novel, but the nature of your submission. You’ve labelled it not the manuscript but a copy of the manuscript, and that’s precisely what you’re going to submit.
To several publishers. Simultaneously.
Publishers, like everybody else in this imperfect world, like to have things their own way. For years they managed this by somehow getting the word out that it would be unethical for an author to submit his work to more than one publisher at a time. Never mind the fact that a manuscript could languish on a publisher’s desk for months on end. Multiple submission, one was given to understand, was underhanded and unfair.
The hell with that noise. The only possible argument against simultaneous submission is that it’s improper to lead someone to believe he’s the only person considering a novel if this is not in fact the case. By describing what you’re sending as a copy, both in your query letter and in the covering letter that accompanies your manuscript, you eliminate this possible source of unpleasantness, and you do this without displaying an unpleasantly aggressive manner. You wouldn’t want to say, “I’m sending this novel to ten other guys at the same time, so you better hop to it if you want to get there fastest with the mostest.” That just might rub Ms. Wimpole the wrong way.
It should go without saying that we’re talking about a clean legible copy of the manuscript, a photocopy equal in quality to the original. Not a carbon copy. Not one of those old-fashioned photocopies on smelly purplish plasticized paper. If that’s the best you can do, you’ll have to do better.
I would suggest that you have between four and six copies of your novel in circulation. More than that gets confusing. When you submit the novel, describe it again as a copy and make it clear that the editor has encouraged you to send it. Don’t take it for granted that she’ll recall your name or anything else about you. It may be hard for you to grasp this, but at this stage of the game Ms. Wimpole plays rather more of a role in your life than you do in hers.
You might write something like this:
Dear Ms. Wimpole,
Thanks very much for your letter of February 19th. As you suggested, I’m enclosing herewith a copy of my gothic novel, Trefillian House. I hope you like it and that it will fit your publishing requirements.
SASE enclosed.
It’s virtually impossible, when submitting to more than one publisher at a time, not to project a fantasy in which two or more of them accept the book the same day. There are three things to keep in mind when this fantasy strikes:
(1) It won’t happen.
(2) It should be your biggest problem.
(3) Your agent will handle it.
Speaking of agents, do you need one? And, if you do, how do you get one?
It’s possible, certainly, to represent yourself, just