DAW books recently made a change to their submission guidelines. After the first three months, they no longer require exclusivity on submitted manuscripts.
From the site:
A literary agent is not required for submission. We will not consider manuscripts that are currently on submission to another publisher unless prior arrangements have been made with a literary agent. It may require up to three months or more for our editors to review a manuscript. If we take longer than three months to review your manuscript, we no longer require an exclusive submission.
An excellent change from a publisher I continue to hear nothing but praise for.
Just popping in to say I submitted a novel to DAW in October (2014), followed up in December and heard to expect to wait for another 2-3 months. I'm a little nervy about following up again in March - I don't want to be That Pain in the Butt Author - even though the email I got said it would be fine.
I’m not ready to publish just yet but I did notice that DAW books want the authors to submit the complete manuscript before they will consider your novel. Is this the norm?
It cuts out the middle stage of partials. They have to streamline the process somehow; I've now heard from 3 people that DAW can still take a year for consideration. Even on agent subs!
DAW is actually doing something I'd hoped they'd do about ten years ago: reissuing the late Tanith Lee's work. I'm happy to see this, but sad that they couldn't do it in her lifetime.
I grew up with this publisher. I'd love to send something there, but not at a year's wait. Have the submission times gone down any?
There's one report on The (Submission) Grinder that was a rejection at 36 days (sometime last month). Even if the editor loves a book, there's a lot of waiting. Things have to go to the accounting department for estimates on what sort of numbers the book *might* earn. If those are good, they go to a larger panel of editors and senior staff to pitch why your book is right for the company at this point in time.
Some editors may tell you they are interested before they go through all those steps, some may not. The best thing to do is sit tight and write another book while you wait.
At about a year's wait, I got a nice rejection letter. They said it was interesting, but not right for them. Alas...
They did mention that they have new processes in place to (hopefully) reduce the wait times in the future. But, they didn't elaborate on the plan.
DAW's submission guidelines at this link say they accept unagented subs, but they require a three-month exclusive hardcopy submission. Does anyone know if these guidelines are up-to-date? This seems kind of retro.
They generally ask for an exclusive submission for any MS they have in slush or under consideration (unless it's been submitted by an agent). From what I understand they are very serious about that.
Most publishers that have open submissions still require paper copies because it further cuts down on the amount of unpublishable material they receive.
Is no news good news? I sent MS on Jan 16 - received my postcard stating it had arrived in mid-March and not a peep since. I've read that others were notified by mail that their MS had passed to the second read.
I know there's a thread for them somewhere in here, but I cannot find it, no matter how I type it into the search field. This announcement popped up in my Twitter feed, that DAW is switching from hardcopy submissions to electronic (finally!). https://twitter.com/dawbooks/status/936682051771797505
Here's the thread. The trick to better searching here is to use the Google Custom Search box at the bottom of the page instead of the standard site search at the top.
ETA: A mod should be able to merge this into the original thread.
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