Friday, May 27, 2011

Some things just don't bother us that much

RIDICULOUS question I know! I was wondering, when I send sample chapters, given that they are random chapters from amongst the novel, do I leave the actual page numbers that they are in the book (like 65-72) or is that too confusing for the poor person trying to read them?
Does it even matter!? There is nothing in the submission guidelines that I've been reading about page numbering.

If there's nothing about it in the submission guidelines, then clearly it doesn't matter enough to the agents/publishers who composed those guidelines. Therefore, don't worry about it. Of course, if you're really worrying about it and it will put your mind at rest, make the numbers sequential. But whoever is reading it is unlikely to notice. We only notice on full manuscripts. And only then usually if there are no page numbers at all.

This earlier post may also help:

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Good answers on this blog. I'll be coming back often, since I am querying right now. I'll have to see what you represent. I haven't been sending sample chapters, but have been putting my first chapters. Perhaps I should switch it up sometimes?

Draven Ames

Laura Maylene said...

Wait a second...it sounds like this writer is sending random chapters from her manuscript (like, chapters 4, 6 and 9) instead of the first three chapters. Unless things operate differently in Australia, this is a big no-no. When an agent asks for sample chapters, they mean the beginning of the book. In order. If you want to send other, random chapters because you think they're stronger than the opening chapters, that's a problem.

If I misread or have this wrong somehow, please correct me!

Sandy said...

Laura,

I was the person who asked this question. Every other place I queried specified "first three chapters" or "first XXX amount of pages" but this particular agency I was querying asked for "the first chapter and two other chapters"...I took this to mean they wanted the other two to be random chapters from the novel. I didn't do it because I thought the other chapters were stronger, I assumed there was a reason they didn't ask for the first three and chose two other chapters that better demonstrated the key relationships in the novel. Hope I did the right thing anyway!

Melba said...

Hello everyone. To answer Laura, different agents/publishers require different things. Some say first chapter, some say first three chapters, some say whole ms and some say three chapters not necessarily sequential, just any three from the ms.

Sorry to answer on someone else's blog like this but couldn't help myself since I knew the answer.

Melba