where and how to publish a book

I searched back to april 2008 but didn’t see anything similar…I thought it would have been asked before.

My daughter has written a manuscript, and I think she should take the next step towards getting it published. I’m not talking about self publishing.

What would be her next steps. Who are some publishers and how does one get manuscripts sent there to be looked over and accepted/rejected?

The manuscript is a non-fiction mystery muder type thing involving a 17 year old orphan ex-hoodlum girl.

A list of book publishers would be nice and perhaps a bit of what she would need to do in the process.

Traditional librarian’s answer: go the library and get the current edition of Writer’s Market. Everything you should need to know is in there.

First of all, is your daughter really actually ready to submit a manuscript? Has she edited it, had it critiqued. edited it again, etc? Publishing is pretty competitive, and unless she’s willing to work to make the manuscript as good as it can possibly bem then she’s at a disadvantage.

Second, the conventional wisdom is that, in the literary marketplace today, it’s more effective to get an agent to sell your work. A good agent has contacts and background knowledge to shop a manuscript around to the publishers it’s most suited for. In fact, some publishers no longer accept unagented submissions. Although many still do, directly submitting to publishers is still a slower process than going through an agent.

Of course, that just changes you question to, “what are some agents?” The librarian’s answer isn’t bad. Another resource is AgentQuery; another is the AbsoluteWrite message board.

In a nutshell, your daughter has to submit a query package to the agent (or publisher, if she goes that route), usually consisting of five pages, a symopsis, and a cover letter, to ask if they would like to see more. This takes some effort and research, so she needs to educate herself. In particular, the field of literary agents and publishers is fraught with scams, so beware!

Invaluable site: Preditors & Editors. The Agents page lists agents, explains how an agent works, and gives warnings of agents and agencies to stay away from.

I prefer Literary Market Place, which can be found in most libraries and has a website: ITI's LiteraryMarketPlace.com ™

Writer’s Digest is somewhat more geared to short manuscripts than books, I’d say, but you can check out its website: http://www.writersdigest.com/GeneralMenu/ It has a forum for discussion, as well.

Most publishers do not accept unagented submissions, so your daughter would also need to check out agents who work in the true crime field and are accepting clients. LMP has a listing of agents.

The Association of Authors Representatives is another good place to search for agents: http://www.aaronline.org/mc/page.do

First rule of advice: never pay money to an agent for representation. An agent makes money only from taking a cut of an advance. Real agents therefore have incentive to place manuscripts.

The best place for cautionary advice is Writer Beware: Beware of Fake Awards - SFWA

You and your daughter need to do a lot of research to answer questions that are hard to answer by those of us who haven’t seen the manuscript. There are many books describing how to submit a manuscript. Libraries have them, but they may not be up-to-date. They can also be purchased at a large bookstore or through Amazon. Follow their advice. A professional-looking submission with all the proper materials - and each agent and publisher may have different requirements - puts you ahead of 90% of submitters. It’s getting past that other 10% that’s so hard.

From my experience, it is virtually impossible to get your manuscript to a publisher without an agent. Most mainstream publishers will not accept unsolicited manuscripts from authors. Up until recently, Christian publishers were one of the last type of publishers that accepted such manuscripts, but starting around 2003 or 2004, even they have resorted to requiring an agent.

I had an opportunity to meet the administrative assistant to a vice-president of a large Christian publishing house, and she told me she would be happy to take my manuscript back with her and show it to her boss. She mentioned this to her boss and was told absolutely that she was not to touch the manuscript, much less read it!

There is a huge paradigm shift going on in the publishing world right now, and nothing is certain. The old school of publishing was tied up in the gamble a publisher would take on an unknown name. It costs a lot of money to edit, print, and market a book. Therefore, publishers were reluctant to take a gamble on anyone without a proven track record (King, Grisham, etc.) or a very recognizable name (any of the novels or children’s books published by actors, politicians, daughters of Presidents, etc.). This reluctance at taking a risky gamble has intensified in today’s economic climate.

It used to be that publishers had editors who would be able to read through manuscripts and find the next big seller. For the most part, that functionality has been outsourced to agents, at virtually no cost to the publishing house.

To echo several of the other posters, check out the Preditors and Editors site. Respectable agents do not require you to pay them up front … they will get paid a percentage of whatever you make on your book after they have sold it to a publisher.

Someone who knows a lot about the pubishing industry (she is a published author. ) had a short course that I went to One tidbit she said was that if you published a book and it did not sell that’s actually worse than having nothing published at all. In other words a bad track record is worse than no record.

BobArrgh, what you say is mostly, but not completely, true for genre fiction.

Non-fiction, however, is a completely different world. It’s still mostly true that publishers would prefer to see agented submissions. But not all, because few publishers would ever ask to see the whole non-fiction manuscript first in the way that’s almost always true in fiction. Non-fiction submissions are preferably chapter and outline plus some evidence of expertise in the area.

You can’t give general advice in publishing. It’s a conglomeration of fields. And non-fiction rules are distinctly different from fiction rules.

Bijou Drains, shouldn’t she wait until she sells and publishes her first book before worrying about her second?

Good point! Fiction is way tougher than non-fiction.