Getting ready to publish

So you think you’ve got a story or novel in shape or your poems in order? Is it time to think about publishing them? How do you know it’s ready?

First up, how do you feel about it? Do you feel proud or maybe a little apprehensive? Listen to your gut/instincts/the voice in your head and what it is saying to you. Anxiety about whether a publisher will like it is normal but being confident of the quality of your work is crucial to persuading someone to publish it. You need to be able to 100 per cent back yourself. Sometimes the voice in your head is not out to get you, it’s telling you it needs more work.

If you just finished your final chapter, the very best thing to do now is to WAIT. Put it in a proverbial drawer for a few weeks, work on something else, and go back to it with fresh eyes. Your first draft is never, ever, EVER the one to submit.

Timo said to me last week it took him nine weeks to write his newest book and six months to have it ready for publication. This ratio of writing/preparation time is about right.

Your manuscript needs to be in the best shape it can be. You do not need to pay a professional editing service before submitting to an agent or publisher. But if it’s riddled with errors they’re not going to look at it no matter how fabulous your story idea is.

If you’re using Word and your manuscript has blue and red underlines in it, get rid of them, it means a spelling or grammar issue. Fix it.

Then do a Control+F (Find) for superfluous words, especially: am, is, are, be, being, been, was, would, were, will, had, could, have. Does that word need to be there? Minimising the use of these words as much as you can is a good place to start.

Rosemary said last week during her review, she found over 900 instances of “was” in her manuscript. A sure sign it’s not ready.

Your manuscript needs to be in ONE document. It doesn’t need to look like a book but make sure it is visually appealing. This means:

• it has a cover page with just the title and your name

• using styles for chapter or poem titles so they all match

• Margins are 2 cm and paper size is A4

• the text is at least a 12 point Times New Roman font, double-spaced, left-justified, and has page numbers

• indent the first line of your new paragraphs

• Every chapter or poem starts on a new page

• remove any additional spaces between words or after full stops

• your emDashes look like this — not -

• you have a table of contents (if necessary) with page numbers that go to the right places in the document

You should approach the writers group or a trusted friend for honest feedback on it before you submit. And you need to be prepared to take onboard constructive criticism.

Also think about word count and how it fits genre. There’s not a hard and fast rule about it all but if you’ve got 100,000 words on your hands for your young adult novel, you need to cut it right down.

Nathan Bransford has a very helpful novel revision checklist for structural review and editing. It has lots of links to all sorts of helpful advice. In fact, his entire website is full of great information and guidance.