Using Maps

Always.

Generally, maps are something you only have to worry about sending once you've sold the book and the publishers are putting the book together in preparation for publication. An editor or agent probably don't care about a map at the submission stages; they want to see your ability as a writer, not as a cartographer.

I wouldn't include anything except the novel itself, though I suppose you could mention in your cover letter that you've been collecting maps and historical documents you'd like to insert into the final product.

I definitely wouldn't include the book cover. You're the one who's trying to find an agent, not your friend. IMHO, anything other than the requested manuscript materials is extraneous.

The documents are a great idea because you could include them as text, and they add flavor. I do think the maps will tell the agent two things:

1) this author is a noob
2) this debut novel, which I will have to work to sell regardless, will be expensive to print because the noob author insists on illustrations

Don't worry, once the agent and publisher fall in love with your writing and you have a publication date, you and the book designer can discuss the maps.

No agent has ever told me to dump the maps for my historical fiction. In fact, this thread is the first to have that consensus so far in my experience.

I included them in partials that have garnered requests for fulls. I can assure you that in the USA, the "educated" (including agents and such) are generally geographically challenged, and historical maps can help if they are not overdone.

If an agent does not want the maps, that agent can tell the writer to omit them when he/she requests a full or submits to publishers. Simple, no?

Simple enough, Don, and you've certainly gotten farther than I have! If you're simply helping the agent remember which ocean one finds when setting out west from Lisbon, then I agree it can't hurt to include maps in a submission. I just wouldn't dare suggest that my debut novel needs the additional expense of illustrations, the bar is already high enough.

RichardB, I like to add one map with names of towns and countours of coastlines that have changed over the centuries. I agree about illustrations being included and problems of expense. My publisher cut 100 printer pages from my 150,000 HF by NOT starting a new chapter on a fresh page.

I thought it best to include a map for my contemporary thilller-horror novel because most of the action takes place on the Island of Santa Catarina off the coast of Brazil. It is a rare Norte Americano who has been there or even heard of the island and the state capital there, Florianópolis.

As an aside --- when my wife, who is from Sao Paulo, came here for a year of schooling in her early teens, one of her Jr. High teachers introduced her to the class as being "from Brazil ... you know .. the capital of Argentina."

I always thought maps had to wait until the final publication stage unless you could draw your own sufficiently or wanted to pay for a professionally drawn one. I'm not a copyright law expert, but I'd be careful about including any non-original maps or other documents that aren't definitely in the public domain.

Funny, I thought I answered this already, but my post is missing. Anyway. i didn't submit maps when I originally queried my agent, but my agent has asked me to make two maps for her to submit my second ms. to an editor. These are NOT the maps that would be published with the book (if any). I can't make publishable quality maps. But I do think they enhance the book enormously at this stage.

Having spoken to some publishers about this kind of thing, the maps handed in by an author usually aren't usable as is. An artist or cartographer usually has to be brought in to make a presentable map anyway. This was nonfiction, but I assume it would generally be the same thing in fiction. These would have to be very professionally-drawn maps for them to be considered for use without alteration.

Here's a compromise idea:

If your first fifty pages (or whatever the agent requires) doesn't involve the places on the map, then don't send the map with the submission. If and when you're asked for a full, then you could send along the map. The focus really IS the writing. Sending in maps might send the (probably false) message that you've been focusing on things other than the writing.

I always included my maps when submitting and never had anybody take issue with it. My publishr liked hte maps and included them in the book when published.