Manuscript Through Email

It probably won't hurt to ask, but ... the general rule is to follow the agent's guidelines to the letter. In this case it's Send By Street Mail.

(Reading a full manuscript on screen is difficult, and making marks on it is impossible. Nor is it reasonable to expect the agent to use his/her printer, paper, and ink to print out a hardcopy of your manuscript just to save you money.)

If I were you, I'd do exactly as the agent asked. If they wanted an emailed version, they'd ask for it.

There are good reasons why many prefer hard copies--lots of them take the pages home with them, or read them on the train. And there's no benefit for them to absorb the cost of printing out your document.

It sounds like you might not have a good printer, since you mention it's a hassle for you to print things out. If I were you, I'd make an effort to get one--they're dirt cheap these days, and the quality is terrific.

Good luck!

If they give you an address print it out and mail it. If they wanted it in email to print on their own or read from the computer they would have asked for it that way.

I was on the great agent hunt not long ago and got requests for the manuscript both ways. Send it they way they prefer even if it's a PITA for you because an e-file may not make it through to them and be readable depending on incompatibility in various systems etc. I had to send my book to my agent twice via email before it went through okay.

You can get things printed from disk at office supply stores like Kinko's.

That's fairly expensive, though. I think the best deal I ever found at a place like that was .23 a page.

I'd mail it in as requested. As others have said, if the agent accepted emailed manuscripts s/he would have asked for it. There's no real harm in asking, but you might annoy the agent, so why chance it?

The last time I looked, you could buy a bare-bones, good-quality inkjet printer for $30-40. Five hundred sheets of paper cost about $7. Inkjet refills, when you need them, run about $20-30. Do you have an allowance, or a birthday coming up, or some jobs you can do to earn some money?

Perks said:

That's fairly expensive, though. I think the best deal I ever found at a place like that was .23 a page.

Click to expand...

I just had Kinko's do a print job for me from a USB stick. It was 6.5 cents a page, boxed up, no additional charges, out the door in ten minutes. Granted, it was a full manuscript and I'm sure I got a per page price break, but I have a hard time believing a shorter job would be that much more per page.

Do any of your school friends have decent printers?

Andrew Jameson said:

I just had Kinko's do a print job for me from a USB stick. It was 6.5 cents a page, boxed up, no additional charges, out the door in ten minutes. Granted, it was a full manuscript and I'm sure I got a per page price break, but I have a hard time believing a shorter job would be that much more per page.

Click to expand...

At the Kinko's here in Oklahoma City they charge the regular copy price for quantity 6.5 to 7.0 a page and they DO charge a per file fee IF there are more than ten files on the disk.

So ask in advance and follow the guidelines to avoid the extra charge.

It still costs about thirty bucks for my manuscript to be printed there. Yes, I have an Epson and the son of a b***h won't print a word since I changed cartridges. I found out from my brother who is a Microsoft technician and works in computer systems that some people are suing Epson for designing printers that don't print.

I picked up a used Canon, but I still have work to do getting it ready to go.

Regards,
Scott

Before I figured out how to do it cheaper at home, I had a place that would print at 3.5 cents a page if you did over 250 pages. Shop around, and I bet you'll find a deal. Sometimes the Office Max or Office Depot ad in Sunday's paper has a coupon for photocopying.

I have e-mailed manuscripts when specifically asked, but I prefer snail mail. Why? Not all wordprocessing files pop up in exactly the same format on all computers and versions of the software, and Microsoft Word is especially bad in this regard. I've had people send me manuscripts which came up at this end looking like they'd been formatted by the family pet. I no longer trust anything except PDF.

Put your best foot forward and send the manuscript in hard copy, formatted exactly as you want the reader to see it.

By the way, unless you are stirring up an awful lot of interest from agents, this shouldn't be much of a problem. How many people are requesting the whole ms.? If you've really got that much interest, your father should be doing everything he can to support you.

(You aren't sending full manuscripts unless they've been requested, are you?)

James D. Macdonald said:

Do any of your school friends have decent printers?

Click to expand...

Better yet, does your school? Perhaps if you tell your English teacher that an agent is interested in your manuscript she could help you out.

When I was in school I abused my printing priveledges quite regularly...

zeprosnepsid said:

Better yet, does your school? Perhaps if you tell your English teacher that an agent is interested in your manuscript she could help you out.

When I was in school I abused my printing priveledges quite regularly...

Click to expand...

Ahhh! You young'ns and your troubles. My computer in high school was a Royal Standard typewriter that weighed about thirty-five pounds. The big honkin' manual typewriter--you know - typewriter, no display, no software, no electricity.

My daughters still ask me why I pound the computer keys so hard. I finally found a typewriter at an antique store and showed my younger daughter how hard one must pound the keys to put ink on the paper. She hasn't asked since.

It was twelve years after high school that the first Apple and Commodore computers for the home hit the market. I never made a Xerox til I was in college. Then we had to pay a DIME per copy and the librarian made the copies for us. So every manuscript had to be typed for submission, then a new one typed from the carbon copy if you needed to send another manuscript.

That was when a a twelve ounce Coke in a glass bottle worth two cents for deposit cost a dime out of the machine and a Hershey bar cost the same. A loaf of bread went for $.28 and a gallon of gas (estra-leaded) was five cents less.

Yeah, back in my day we all lived at the bottom of a lake, and all we got was a handful of gravel for breakfast. Yeah! We chipped our novels into stone with a mallet. That's what we did, while walking home from the mammoth hunt for six miles, uphill both ways.

Regards,
Scott

UrsusMinor said:

I
By the way, unless you are stirring up an awful lot of interest from agents, this shouldn't be much of a problem. How many people are requesting the whole ms.? If you've really got that much interest, your father should be doing everything he can to support you.

(You aren't sending full manuscripts unless they've been requested, are you?)

Click to expand...

I agree. In fact, even if only ONE agent has asked for a full ms your dad should be scrambling to help you. You need to make sure he understands what a rare and amazing thing this is - let him read this thread, and tell him that this is the advice of published authors with serious credits. If one of my kids got such a request I'd be bringing out the champagne!

One caveat: who is the agent? Have you researched him/her properly? Do you mind sharing the name with us? If you'd rather not, you can pm any of us here and we'll let you know if it's OK.

In which case, ditto what aruna and Ursus said. Michael Bourret's from Dystel & Goderich, who are about as legit and top-notch as they come, and agents like that don't request fulls from every Tom, Dick, and Meggy. Your dad oughta scramble to help.

Woo, Meggy, that's awesome. I'd recommend you invite your dad to stop in and read this thread -- Dystel and Goderich are topnotch. They're on my short list, the one of Agents I'd Sell My Soul For.

Heck, I'd give you a ream of paper myself to print it out.