What Are Different Types of Submissions?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 เม.ย. 2024
- Literary agents Jessica Faust and James McGowan discuss the different types of submissions that agents submit to editors, including exclusive submissions, simultaneous submissions, options, and more!
BookEnds is dedicated to making publishing a book traditionally a more transparent process, and it starts with these videos!
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Jessica Faust’s love for books is what first brought her to open BookEnds Literary Agency. It is her desire to be an advocate for all authors that pushed her to create her blog, the BookEnds TH-cam channel and to maintain a vibrant presence on Twitter.
Jessica is proud to have grown BookEnds to an agency that represents authors of all genres for children and adults, allowing her to reach more readers and help more authors and illustrators achieve their dreams.
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James McGowan is a Literary Agent at BookEnds and writer for children. He began working with the agency as an intern in the summer of 2015, and basically never left. He represents a talented group of authors and illustrators working in everything from board books to middle grade graphic novels. He also works in adult nonfiction, and adult mystery and suspense projects. James is the author of GOOD NIGHT OPPY, which is available now.
Connect with BookEnds!
Twitter: bookendslit
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Website: www.bookendsliterary.com
Connect with Jessica: bookendsjessica
Connect with James: jmcgowanbks
I miss you guys. I keep checking on Wednesdays for new videos.
Thank you for your videos. They are inspiring, and definitely take a lot of the guessing out of what agents do. I just submitted to one of the agents at BookEnds because you seem to have such insight and integrity.
We miss your videos! Hope you two come back soon.
Enjoy your hiatus. When you return, I'd like to hear your thoughts on this possible topic: Writers have usually/always told not to write to the trend, and this is understandable. But it seems like publishers are publishing to the trend. (Perhaps partly booktok influence?) So what's the prevailing thought or advice today?
I've felt completely like a fish out of water for the last few days, as I've had to resort to writing using pen and paper, because my old laptop has been transferred to my new one! I kinda liked it though!✍️✍️✍️
I miss your videos. My Wednesdays are a lot less fun.
Love this! Thanks for sharing
Great question , great video ! Thank you for educating on this !
It's like you knew the one question on my mind! Yay🎉🎉
I got your message on your last video. Thanks for making this. It’s really helpful ❤
Interesting topic! Thanks for the info on this.
Great thanks
Here's a question for you, maybe for a future video... I'm nearly finished writing a novel and thinking about submitting it to agents. Meanwhile, I'm also thinking about submitting the first chapter to various 'first chapter writing contests' I've seen, as well as submitting various chapters to literary journals and sites which say they accept novel excerpts. Would it make my novel seem more attractive to an agent if they saw that portions of it had previously been published, or would there be any unwitting disadvantages to doing that, like copyright issues, which might make it less attractive to an agent?
Hi! Different agents feel different ways about previously published books (or partials). If it's just one or two chapters, it's most likely not going to hinder your query, and some agents might even see it as a boon since clearly other people in the literary sphere enjoy your writing enough to publish it! But if it's a lot of chapters, you might have to be careful, because already having a large portion of your book available elsewhere can technically make it a little harder to sell to some editors. This can also be genre dependent!
If I’m trying to queue for representation as a debut author are my chances lower to find an interested agent if it’s a book 1 of a series? Would it be better to write a stand-alone instead?
Hi! Plenty of agents are excited to take on series, so if your book is a series that's fine!
Question.
I queried one of your agents pretty much 6 months ago with no response. From what I have been told (and what other agents state as well) that if you hear nothing for 3 months, it's a rejection. So I queried another who represents the genre I write in. Was that alright to do?
Also, what baffles me is why an agent would state "that's not what I'm looking for." when in their wishlist/bio it's exactly what they are looking for? I get it agents are busy and can't response personally to every query, but this makes it rather unprofessional giving such reasons.
Hi! Some agencies have a "no response means no" policy, meaning if you don't hear back from them after a certain amount of time, you should consider it a rejection. BookEnds is NOT like that. We do respond to all queries eventually, even if we end up falling behind for some time. So if you haven't received a rejection, it's still under consideration. But if it's taking too long, you are always welcome to withdraw your query with the first agent and submit to another!
As for "not what I'm looking for" this usually comes down to the execution. Perhaps on paper your manuscript might perfectly fit their wishlist, but the way that it's executed might not be what they're looking for. If they say they're looking for a dark sci-fi and you submit a dark military sci-fi, but they're really not a fan of military books, then it would be considered "not what they're looking for" even though it's a dark sci-fi. It's impossible to perfectly cover our wishlist do's and don't's so we try our best to be accurate but there are always exceptions!
@@BookEndsLiterary I see. thanks for the response. In this case I should withdraw from the agent I queried over 6 months ago, since I have queried someone else.
OK, this does explain as to why I keep getting such responses. So I'm not wrong with my query as I did the right thing, just the tropes/story isn't really their thing.
Always drove me crazy when I keep getting such responses, and still adding "not what I'm looking for at that time". Like how do I know it is the right time?
Hi! Newbie writer here! I’ve watched tons of your videos on what information is best to include in different aspects of the query/synopsis etc. However, I was wondering if there is a specific format that is preferred for the actual manuscript itself? Font type/size, double/single spaced, margins, page numbers, chapter headers?? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Hi! There's no hard and fast rule, but we recommend keeping legibility in mind, and then you usually can't go wrong! A pretty standard format would be Times New Roman/Calbri/Arial/etc. in 12 point font, double-spaced, 1 inch margins, and then something to set the chapter header apart (it can be bolded, all capital letters, halfway down the page, or any mix of these things and more)
As long as your document is decently readable (no zany fonts or too-small spacing between the lines) for accessibility purposes, you should be fine even if you break some of the rules.
@@BookEndsLiterary thank you so much!!! So helpful as always!
Where are u?
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