Knowing When You're Ready for Publication

first things first--do you want to be published by a "Big 6 imprint" or not? Because for most of those, they don't tak unsolicited manuscripts....meaning you need an agent. and if you randomly sub to a smaller house, that represents a "lost chance" for a potantial agent...as in a guy who may have had lunch with that publisher's editor last week.

You don't need an agent, but you do need to choose--either you want to get an agent, or a publisher; you're best off not trying to work down the middle.

That said, an agent pitches to an editor....the bar isn't any different for one than the other. And it is high.

How you "know" varies, the only certainty is that by the numbers the vast majority who think they're ready are not...the trick is in being able to objectively tell if you are. And I'm not sure there's an answer for that. It certainly helps if you can sub a piece in SYW and not have it savaged, if you've gotten some shorts published in very selective journals, etc., but those aren't the only determinants.

I'm not sure you can ever know, for certain, when a thing is ready to submit, but you damn sure can know how the submission process works, and your post clearly indicates that you don't. Research that. This place can help.

caw

well, that's a fairly significant point, then....you wanna "try for the big 6" you need to try for an agent.

It's very difficult for writers to judge their own work, especially when they're new to writing. Some of the things I saw in the slush pile were stunningly bad, and nowhere near ready for submission, let alone publication.

You could submit your work and hope it's good enough, but chances are you'll get nothing but form rejections if you take this route.

Or you could join a writers' group, or put your work up in Share Your Work here and while you're at it, help others improve their work (which is one of the best ways I know of improving your own work: I've seen it transform writers' output in all sorts of brilliant ways). There are paid-for services which will help you, and some can be very good: but I'd not take that route until you've spent a few months in SYW, critting like crazy and learning your craft.

Mr. Mask said:

Come to think of it, I guess I could start critting others' work on the boards before 50 posts. Might get to that soon.

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Seriously, this is one of the best ways to spend your time on AW if you want to improve your own writing. Looking at others' prose analytically, seeing what works and what doesn't, is tremendously valuable for evaluating your own.

Seconding what the Rooster said.

Critiquing other people's work is such a good way to learn what's wrong with your own: it's safer, emotionally speaking, to look for mistakes in work that you didn't create and aren't emotionally invested in. Spend a month critiquing work for other people, and then revise your own: you'll see all sorts of things you would have missed before.

Mr. Mask said:

Come to think of it, I guess I could start critting others' work on the boards before 50 posts. Might get to that soon.

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And it's probably one of the best, most constructive ways to get to 50 posts.

fourthing Rooster.

Echoing everyone who said critting is awesome and a good use of your time.

What they all say. Plus, there's a handy guide in poster form from 826:

http://www.826national.org/826store/279

I have a framed copy by my writing desk.

I decide to submit when the comments I'm getting reverse the comments I got the last time or totally feel wrong. (Doesn't mean they are wrong, just means I need more views or time)That's what takes me from my small crit group to these boards and my bigger group. Then I go back and forth between them until the changes are getting made and unmade again. At that point, I decide which really works better, hope for a conference critique or first pages session to finalize, and then submit for real. Ready to submit to agents or for publication is not the same as ready for publication - the editors and agents get a say in that too.

Yu submit as soon as you finish the work. This is the time tested way, no matter who tells you otherwise, and it's the only reliable way to get published. You write much, you submit everything you write, and you keep doing this until you break in.

If you follow Heinlein's Rules to the letter, chances are extremely high that you will get published. If yu don't follow them, chances are equally high that you'll fail.

Writer's groups are generally no more than a way to make your work just like every other writer's work, and to an agent or editor, this means same old, same old. Read Heinlein's Rules, follow Heinlein's rules, and if you have any talent at all, you'll succeed.

quicklime said:

fourthing Rooster.

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This sounds like a wrestling move . . . or a shot you would only drink on your 21st birthday.

i got a shot of tequila and tobasco....that's what you get for having hillbilly friends still at 21

Mr. Mask said:

I did a search, but couldn't find anything on the subject. How do you reasonably estimate if your story is ready to submit to editors for publishing? Is it different from when your story is ready to be submitted to an agent?

Either way, the focus is on publishing. I guess that if you can get an agent, they can give you a very good idea on how ready your work is. What about before you have an agent, if you want to submit without one?

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I'm there right now with a novel I wrote. I have submitted to both. It took a long time to get to that point. My ms underwent significant revisions based on excellent advice from excellent betas. I worked and reworked the thing, posted a query on QLH, discovered my book wasn't done, went back in there and revised it yet again, adding chapters and moving things around. Finally, I was happy with it. I have faith in it now and I feel it's where it needs to be.

Ultimately, it's a judgment call. The query process is validation of that. When forced to distill my novel into a 250-word gem, I had to look at it objectively. I had to know it inside and out, and be okay with it, and present the gist of it in a way that shows story, character, writing skill, voice. I did that. Took a while, but I'm good with the query. And good with the novel. Sending it out to agents and publishers is the next step, albeit a scary one and I don't know what will happen there but I know, right now, the thing is as ready as it's gonna be.

As for sending your work out with or without an agent, that's up to you. As quick says, chances of landing a big six contract without an agent is a crap shoot at best. Dependent on your work, genre etc., you may choose to go a different route. Do your homework, but first, get your novel as done as you can get it. When you are confident that it's ready, you can decide how best to proceed. Your focus will then be finding the right fit for your novel, as opposed to wondering if it's ready to submit.

I'm so glad that this question has been asked.

The majority of submissions that agents and publishers receive have been sent out way before the author is ready.

Authors submit work that is insufficiently polished, or they aren't experienced enough as writers so they're not writing at a high enough standard yet.

Or they haven't researched agents/publishers/publishing enough and so they've sent it to the wrong places or people, or sent it out in the wrong way.

If such submissions were removed from the slush pile, everyone involved in the submissions process would be happier: authors wouldn't get so many rejections; agents and editors would have fewer submissions and they'd be of a higher quality and more appropriate nature, so those receiving them could process them more quickly and provide more feedback. It would benefit everyone.

How to convince writers that they should wait? And how to define what's ready and what isn't? That's the hard thing.

Old Hack: How to convince writers that they should wait? And how to define what's ready and what isn't? That's the hard thing.

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Just thinking back to my *ahem* first . . . and second . . . and third. . . I wrote in such a rush, riding that wave and of course, as soon as I typed "The End" (okay, no I didn't, I typed three hashtag thingies ) I wanted to get 'em out there. I thought they were done. FOOL. But I rushed headlong into the process of finding an agent, with no idea what I was doing. I wrote HORRIBLE queries and actually sent them to amazing agents like Janet Reid, Jane Chelius, Donald Maass--I cringe at the thought. The fact that one of my novels garnered a full request is unthinkable. Nothing happened there, good thing because that novel wasn't ready, my God. . .

This writing business is very odd. I've never experienced anything like it and I know my experience is probably a lot different than most, but I have to believe that there are a ton of newbies out there, riding that high from finishing their novels, rushing headlong into trying to get the thing published, grand visions clouding sound judgment. If I had known about AW back then, I wonder if I would have put on the breaks? Even now, I know the feeling of finishing and thinking you're done, wanting to BE done, wanting to get it out there, hoping. . .

Sending out less-than-stellar work is partly due to that rush factor and you're right, Hack, partly due to writers who are too inexperienced to recognize that their work isn't quite up to snuff. Skills need practice, and especially for those writers who fail to get their work beta'd, iow, who write in a vaccuum and crit their own stuff--it's like being your lawyer and having a fool for a client. I did it, wrote by myself. Nobody but family read it. I thought it was good to go.

That's another reason AW is so important to writers. You can post your stuff, get crits, find betas, crit others' work; there are opportunities to witness really good writing and not-so-good writing, and see how writers improve over time. You have a lot of opportunities to write and thus, improve your writing, which takes time. If new writers would avail themselves of that, I think they wouldn't be as likely to rush headlong into sending out first drafts. They'd see the wisdom of waiting, give themselves time to learn, to get better. . .

Lots of ifs.

The OP poses a great question; I wish more starting writers asked it instead of rushing to submit. It's understandable. Writing novels in particular is a long, lonely business with no feedback of any value (because the praise of friends and family, while encouraging, has no other value.) The desire for validation can become overwhelming, and that can lead to the scourge of Premature Submission.

If you've finished a first draft, congratulations! The vast majority of people who start novels never finish them, so finishing a draft is worth celebrating. Now stick it in a drawer and forget about it for a month. Let it ripen. You're not done yet--you're just a step closer to done.

Do other stuff in the interim. Get your hair cut; get your annual physical; do all the stuff you didn't have time to do while writing. Critiquing other writers' work, as others here have suggested, is a great way to sharpen your eye.

After a month or so, you're ready to start editing. You can't do it all in one go, not adequately. It takes a number of passes. With my own writing, and in the revision classes I teach, I break the process down into 6 or 7 stages, each one looking at different aspects of the novel. For example, I'll follow each major character through the book, looking at only his scenes, in order to gauge stuff like character development and arc. I do the same for each subplot. I look at the first and last scenes side by side to see if there's a relationship. And so on.

When the first draft is done, the first step is done. You're not finished, and you're not ready to submit yet. What you can do is use the time you spend editing to learn more about the publishing business and thus be in a better position to act smartly when the book really is ready.