Manuscript Submissions

In a comment on this entry about a writer's conference I was asked about manuscript submissions.

I noted that there was no discussion at the conference about proper formatting. I said in my previous entry that manuscripts should be double spaced, have 1" margins all the way around, use good white clean crisp paper, and have boring fonts (Times Roman or Courier or Arial, generally) and use only one side of the paper.

That is for hard copy submissions. Many publications still request submissions by mail. Others ask for a hard copy along with the article (and/or digital photos) on a disk such as a CD. Some might ask you to e-mail the document and follow with a hard copy. There are as many ways of doing it as there are publications.

Even if a publisher will take a document over the Internet, it still must be formatted properly. That can take some finesse because every e-mail reader pulls things up differently.

The most important thing is to follow the directions in the writer's guidelines for the publication you are working with. If they say hard copy, send them hard copy. If they don't go into detail about margins in the document, then follow the standard above. If they say send a disk, send a disk. If they say submit by e-mail, do that. If they want something in .pdf or .rtf or .doc format, be sure that is what you send them.

By all means, be professional in what you do. These are business people and they are operating a business.

In Nonfiction Book Proposals Anybody Can Write, Elizabeth Lyon states:

Be generous with your margins. ... Use 1" to 1.25" margin for all sides. It's standard to drop down six line spaces (or half an inch) before you begin your header.

She also notes that there is no longer two spaces after a period. This has been a difficult thing for me to overcome, because I was taught to use two spaces (I learned on a typewriter - remember those?). I think a lot of older folks (that makes me sound ancient, doesn't it) have trouble with this.

Moria Anderson Allen in her book Starting Your Career as a Freelance Writer has an entire chapter on formatting your manuscript.

For print manuscripts, she says:

Good paper (20-pound bond minimum, never erasable
Double spacing
1-inch margins all around (at least)
A clear, readable font
Paragraphs indicated by indents, not by an extra line space

She goes into great detail on formatting; it's probably the best chapter on this that I've ever read. She also goes into fonts and electronic submissions (which have their own set of rules).

I mention all of this because it is an important detail. It would be awful to have created a great work that never sees print simply because in the final phase of creation the writer is sloppy.

Lyon also says, "If you're rather be writing your book than editing for format, hire a perfectionist to edit it for you."

I think that might be me.