Seriously, now, don't do these things

There is a lot of information 'out there' for writers, including this here website. Lots of dos, lots of don'ts, lots of advice in general. Still, though - STILL! - the same errors crop up in submissions over and over again. So here's a short list - a reminder, if you will - of what not to do.

1. Do not send out your manuscript if it's still at first-draft stage -  there will always be room to improve after that, and you need to send out the best possible version of your work.

2. Do not send out your manuscript if you know, in your gut (or your heart - whichever you prefer), that it isn't ready, even if it's had several drafts. You only have one chance to submit to agents and publishers - once you've been rejected, it is highly unlikely that the same manuscript will be looked at again. And, deep down, you know when it's still not ready - you're just trying to talk yourself out of it.

3. Do not send your submission to someone who isn't interested in the genre or category of book you're writing. Children's authors, you're the big culprits here - many of you send submissions to agents and publishers who don't represent or publish children's books. 

4. Do not ignore the submission guidelines - they're arbitrary, yes, but they're our attempt to create order out of chaos.

That's my short Friday afternoon list. If you want some more pointers, play this game.

Pitch, wait, wait, wait, follow up

I recently pitched to a publisher at a writer's festival and forgot to ask how the follow-up procedure worked. I left them with a query letter and the first chapter of my novel. What do you suggest the follow-up procedure should be? Should I call after three months if I have not heard anything etc?

Three months is very reasonable but I actually think you don't need to wait that long if it was a letter and a chapter and you met someone - six weeks is enough time. Only call if you have a number for an actual individual - if all you have is a switchboard number, you're probably not going to get through. And the reason for that, in my experience, is that us publishing folks don't like phone calls. We like things in writing (this probably won't come as a surprise). So send an email - if it's to a general email address, mark it for the attention of whomever it was you met, briefly say where you met and what you gave her/him, say that you're following up and that if you haven't heard back within another six weeks, you'll send another note. Keep it short and polite. Don't ask for anything. Don't use any words that could be construed as a complaint that you haven't heard from her/him already. Do not look directly into their eyes. Do not feed the animals. Et cetera.

If you still haven't heard after three months, leave it. In the meantime, you should be querying elsewhere. Unless this publisher asked you for exclusivity they don't expect it, so put some other irons in the fire while you wait.

Ruled by rules

The genre I read to death, that I love the most, is chick lit (the typical ones like Marian Keyes, Sophie Kinsella and Catherine Alliott) so when I wrote my book, that's the sort of tone I feel I have written it in. HOWEVER the storyline has a love triangle that includes a ghost. It doesn't delve into the whole afterlife aspect a great deal, but basically the main character moves to an apartment haunted by a young male ghost and after learning to communicate with him she eventually falls for him.

When I first attempted a query letter I described it as chick lit. After posting it on a website to have others critique it I was told it was a 'paranormal romance' and therefore the word count was insanely too high (115 000 words). What are your thoughts? What genre (given my very simple description) would you class it as, and based on that do I need to cut the word count down a huge amount? I suppose I'd also like to know if an agent likes the query letter, thinks the storyline sounds interesting but the word count seems too high, would they still be interested or reject it based on word count?

Paranormal romance, like all genres/subgenres with 'romance' in the name, has specific rules. I am no expert in them, although I do like to read a bit of the ol' paranormal romance. With the rules come rules about submitting: if you want this story to be categorised as paranormal romance, then you need to submit to agents and publishers who handle that genre and you may, accordingly, need to trim down your word count if that's what the genre calls for (and I must say that the novels are on the 70 000-words-or-thereabouts size).

There is no rule, however, that says you must submit your manuscript as paranormal romance. If you think it's chick lit then it's chick lit. Or 'women's contemporary'. Or just fiction. Accordingly, you can keep your 115 000 words and submit to agents and publishers - just don't submit to those who specialise in paranormal romance.

If an agent/publisher likes the cut of your jib but thinks you are word-heavy, they'll likely tell you. However, I never advise cutting just for the sake of it. The story takes as long as it takes. If your story needs 115 000 words and there's no fat in there, then there's no point cutting just because someone else thinks it's too long.

So your task now is to decide what sort of novel you think you have written, identify agents/publishers to submit to accordingly and do not under any circumstances say in your query letter that you are prepared to cut the length if the agent/publisher thinks it's warranted. We know that authors will usually cut if we ask them to - if we think it's needed. But you shouldn't lead with that, as it's tantamount to saying that you don't have confidence in what you've written.

Conundra about querying

The particular agency I have chosen to try first has great specific submission guidelines on their website BUT says that the initial contact needs to be via phone or email. Does this mean I send my query letter (without anything else) via email? A ditzy question I imagine but no amount of googling has found me the answer! Also, there are agents' names listed on their website ... I've had a snoop via google into each of them and whilst they all seem great, I'm not sure whose name I should put on the initial query email?

And breathe ... two ... three ... four ...

Just relax. You're not going to be rejected just because you're not sure which agent to send it to. If this agency's guidelines are unclear that's their fault, not yours.

'Initial contact by phone or email' is a little unclear when there are also specific submission guidelines, so hedge your bets: send just the query letter by email, with no sample text, and it's also okay to say that you weren't sure how much to send initially, and you're happy to send more if required. You're not going to be rejected for being thoughtful and polite.

In terms of whose name to use: use the agency's name. 'Dear [agency name] ...' The agency I work for gets enquiries about which name to use but, really, it doesn't matter to whom you address the query - it will get read regardless. Just don't say 'Dear sir' unless you happen to know it's run by men. The Australian agents are overwhelmingly female in number and nothing sets the teeth to grinding like a 'Dear sir', because it indicates a complete lack of attention to any sort of known detail about Australian agencies.

Many authors, one query letter

I ran across your blog today and was wondering if you knew the correct way to send a query letter with multiple authors, or do you think that we should use only one name in our query letter?

The correct way is to list all the names of the authors involved. Unless none of you wants your names known, in which case you should construct a pseudonym.

I'm not sure why having multiple authors would even be a cause of concern - lots of books have more than one author!

There is no agent for you

I'm looking to get a book published. I have one problem, though, and it's that I'm not sure which agents can/will represent my work. I thought that, since you run the "Call My Agent!" blog, you might have some good advice to help set me in the right direction. So here's my problem:

I've designed a pen-and-paper game and the book is the set of rules for that game. So my problem is, essentially, that I don't really know which agencies to send my work to or how to word a query letter about my game. Almost all the advice I can find on the internet regarding queries is directed specifically towards fiction writers, and when I rang the Australian Society of Authors, the advice I got was 'just send out a query letter to as many agencies as you can'. Because my book is more like a manual for a computer or board game than a fiction novel, it's

difficult to know where to send it or how to advertise it.

I'll overlook your egregious use of 'fiction novel' and focus on your conundrum ... and it is a conundrum.

First, as the panel at right ----> says, I can't give advice about individual agents.

Second, your project is nothing that any agent I can think of would be able to place for you, unless that agent has specialised knowledge of games. And, generally speaking, we're book nerds, not game nerds. The ASA should probably have told you that. Agents tend to deal mainly with trade publishers, and that's not really the sort of book a lot of Australian trade publishers will look at.

Academic publishers may be interested, but because I'm not a game nerd I don't know enough to tell you that definitively. The best thing to would be to try to find some books similar to yours, see who published them and then make some enquiries accordingly. Good luck!

Guidelines from the Paseolithic period

I’m an editor and my friend is a writer. She believes that the rules of this: http://www.sfwa.org/archive/writing/format_betancourt.htm are necessary for submitting manuscripts.

Apart from when I volunteered at a small press, everything I’ve seen as an editor was first cleared by an agent, but almost none of the manuscripts followed these exact rules. Do all these rules really matter in an electronic world? Is it more important when sending to an agent?

Of course, I’m NOT advocating the use of extravagant fonts that aren’t default, but I haven’t seen anything in Courier. Of course, publishers and agents need an idea of the word count, but they don’t need some special formula of ‘the amount of space a story will take up when typeset’ because the MS will go through many changes and the total word count will be totally different. And using spaces or tabs instead of alignment will most likely irk the layout people, but does it have to be exactly double spaced when first submitting?

What’s all this mean in the world of the agent?


Your friend has, perhaps, not seen the little copyright notice on that web page - it reads '1997'. A lot has changed since then, mainly the fact that a lot of submissions happen electronically - if not by author to agent, then by agent to publisher.

Personally, the only font I can't stand is Courier, and if a manuscript comes in with Courier then I usually change it - because I don't expect the author to intuit that I hate Courier, and also because Microsoft Word lets me. That's the wonder of the new-fangled age: we have options. When submitting manuscripts to publishers I will usually send them in the font they came in - unless it's Courier - and I'll only reformat the line spacing if it's single (1.5 or 2 line space is nicer on the eye when reading electronically). Not a single publisher has ever protested that they didn't like the formatting or font because they probably do what I do and change it if they don't like it.

The only formatting guidelines that matter are the ones set by the agent or publisher to whom the author submits a manuscript. If there are no guidelines that you can find, presume that there are no guidelines and do what you want. The agent cannot then say 'but I wanted it in Courier'. If there are guidelines, they should be followed. It's annoying that we all don't have uniform guidelines, but there's nothing to be done about it - everyone has different tastes (such as 'I hate Courier'). And if you want to know why I really believe that authors get hung up on formatting, read this post.

Authonomy me, Authonomy you

How much value is there in websites such as HarperCollins’ Authonomy, where authors post their work for critiquing by other amateurs? Works are promoted by the number of comments and recommendations they receive and HarperCollins promise to review the top five each month with a view to publication. Sounds good, but in practice it degenerates into a kind of black market, where authors trade kudos without even bothering to read the work in some cases.

WHAT?!? The internets degenerating into a rogue trading arena with scant regard for ethics and high regard for devalued content? Colour me shocked. (For those non-Australian, non-Canadian readers, that was sarcasm. Yes, it's the lowest form of wit. I've never claimed to aspire to higher forms of wit, because I'm incapable of producing them.)

Authonomy has had its doubters from the start, so I suggest you regard it as you would regard any other online community: engage in it if you want the experience, but don't expect that it will change your life. And then add this on top: it's a marketing exercise for HarperCollins, and a perfectly legitimate one that was kinda smart at the time it was launched. It's also a fabulous way for them to get free content (as it would be for any publisher who had this kind of website).

I don't know how successful Authonomy has been for the authors who have taken part i.e. if it's really translated into book publication and books that have reached a wider audience. I don't know because, actually, I haven't been interested. I'm too busy trying to keep up with my own submissions. I recall wondering what HarperCollins' publishing department would have thought of it, though - it just meant more work for them, reading yet more submissions when they didn't have time to read the submissions they receive via old-fashioned methods. And, probably, Authonomy's effectiveness is limited by this lack of time/resources to properly service it. Still, it gets a lot of eyeballs on a HarperCollins website (and in the future eyeballs will probably be a legitimate unit of measurement) so, from a commercial point of view, the site is there to benefit HarperCollins - they own the domain name. It's nice if it benefits authors as well, but there are plenty of online communities for writers. I'm not sure how this one would more beneficial than another, even if it is run by a publisher.

Of course, the publishing, bookselling and book-reading industry is changing so rapidly - more than many people who are working in it realise - that this is all going to be moot shortly. It's entirely possible that we are watching the dying days of empires, waiting to see which phoenix emerges. Somehow I don't think Authonomy has wings.

A short question!

Do you need a word count for non-fiction query letters?

Sadly the question is so short that I'm not sure whether you mean 'Do I need to include a word count for my manuscript in the query letter?' or 'Should the query letter itself conform to a word count?' So my excitement at your brevity has now paled in the halogen glare of my confusion.

Just in case it's behind-door-number-two: ideally all query letters are about four or five paragraphs long - or about a normal A4 page in 1.5 line spacing for the obsessives amongst you.

If it's about the word count for the potentially unwritten non-fiction manuscript: yes, give an estimate, lest the publisher thinks they may be contracting something that's either 400 000 words long or 15 000 words short. You won't necessarily be held to the estimate, but contracts tend to contain a word limit so there needs to be something.

Snail mail

Some agents say if they don't see a reply-paid envelope right away they reject the query immediately. This is a big problem when querying American agents since many won't deal with IRCs and insist on US stamps. I spent hours trying to buy US stamps online only to discover the US Postal Service is 'not at this time accepting overseas orders'.

As for IRCs, Australia Post is not issuing any more. There's some new system planned, I'm told, but no-one seems to know what it is.

In my queries I mention these facts and ask if they'd mind replying by email. Of course, if they don't get that far into the query they might reject it first.

I'll start by clarifying that 'IRCs' mean 'International Response Coupons' for those who - like me - didn't immediately twig. And now I'm going to state that I wasn't asked a question, so I'm not really sure what I'm meant to say. I'll take a guess at a question, though:

'So what do I do when I can't send an IRC or American stamps?'

Well, you've already stated your problem in your query letter and asked the agents to respond by email. Whether they do or not is something you obviously can't control, so you're probably just going to have to risk it. There are also agencies who take electronic queries so you would have no problems there.

I anticipate that the day will come - soon - when agencies around the world will have to move beyond snail mail queries and embrace the digital age, ready or not. I personally find it a waste of time to send things back by post, SSAE or not. I'd love it if everyone queried electronically. It's much easier to organise queries when I can file them in folders in my email programme, and it's more environmentally friendly.

As for you, querying author, it's your decision as to whether or not you send queries to the luddites, and you'll just have to accept the consequences. The US and Australian postal services have obviously realised there's no money to be made in IRCs or foreign purchase of stamps because - guess what? - people use email.

The dead end

I’m an author and I’ve written what I think is a really good book. I’ve passed it around to colleagues and friends, and friends of friends who tell me (hopefully with honesty) that it’s full of all of the good things a great book should be full of.

Yet, I’m having terrible trouble finding a literary agent, and I think that it’s because my book (as great as it may be) is hard to market. I’m 29 and unpublished, and my book takes the form of a prose-y, personal memoir-ish, travelogue in which I challenge the conventions of modern marital restrictions, and question my own relationship and existence.

I’m getting decline letters left and right despite the fact that I know I have a good book! What on earth do I do?

Honey, every writer thinks they've written a good book, otherwise they would never submit their manuscript to agents and publishers. I've not yet come across an author who says 'I think my manuscript is crap, but I'm sending it to you anyway'. Funnily enough, though, a lot of my published authors - wonderful, talented people - are convinced that everything they write is crap. I find this simultaneously hilarious - It's brilliant! How could they doubt it! - and disturbing - If they think it's awful, how can I convince them otherwise? Why can't they see it's good? (AL, I'm talking to you). Maybe there's some kind of logarithm for that ... Author self-belief (X) is in inverse proportion to literary merit of novel (Y) where Z is variable. I'll leave you to work out what Z is.

Anyway, back to you. Here are a few tips:

1. Friends and friends of friends are not good judges of literary quality. They are always going to tell you what you want to hear, especially if they tell you that that's exactly what they're not doing. Unless all those friends work in the publishing industry, their opinions won't matter. And please don't put them in your query letter.

2. Saying that you think your manuscript hasn't been picked up because it's hard to market is equivalent to blaming the formatting of the ms ('I should never have used Courier New!!!'). If something's good enough, being hard to market doesn't matter.

3. ' I challenge the conventions of modern marital restrictions, and question my own relationship and existence' - at this point I thought your email may have been a joke, but I proceeded in good faith. Don't you think this subject matter has been done before? What makes your manuscript different? How are you going to do it differently to, say, Jay McInerney in The Good Life, even if that was a novel and you have written a memoir? Or Julie Benz in Perfection? [Ed note: after writing this I realised I was confusing Julie Benz - 'Darla' in Angel - with Julie Metz, the real author of this book. D'oh! So it's Perfection by Julie Metz.]

4. If you're convinced you have written a brilliant, if misunderstood, manuscript, publish it online. You'll find out soon enough.

I'm probably sounding snarky. I know I should be encouraging you to hang in there et cetera. But I'm reluctant to, for these reasons: first, because I don't understand why everyone who writes thinks publication is the sine qua non of their endeavour, when there are plenty of musicians who never want to put out a record or dancers who never want to appear on So You Think You Can Dance; second, there is a lot of complaining about why agents and publishers close submissions, and the reason is that we get far too many manuscripts that are simply not up to scratch, and we then make a decision to miss the potentially brilliant one because we're not up to wading through the other stuff.

It's possible you have written a brilliant manuscript, and that it's just not the time for it to find a publisher. Or it's possible that it's just not ready yet. Or that it will never be ready. So I'll go back to a common piece of advice: put it aside for six months and then read it again. If you find absolutely nothing to change, put it aside for another few weeks or months. Repeat. Good writers - great writers - will always be drafting, realising that the story is continually in motion. If you think your manuscript cannot be improved, well ...

The hold-up

I completed my first novel (a 2-year journey) early this year. I sent in a query letter/submission to a few agents (not many were accepting unsolicited childrens' fantasy submissions) in February, and had no luck. Given the much-advertised 'economic crisis' I decided to hold off sending it directly to publishers, thinking they would be unlikely to take on new unknown writers this year with a presumably reduced childrens' list, and I shouldn't waste my one chance with them.

My intention was to send it to publishers early next year, but now, 4 months later and given I'm a new (impatient) writer, I am itching to try as soon as I can. I know you can't predict the future but nevertheless my question (or questions) involve it:

1.Would it be best to wait till next year, or until this 'economic crisis' blows over, before sending my manuscript to publishers?

2. Will I be blowing my 'only' chance if I send it around now or a little later this year?

3. If I do send it round now and have no luck due to reduced capacity for publishing books in this current economic downturn, would it be acceptable for me to resubmit later (in 1 or 2 years' time)?

I'll do the short answers first:

1. MAYBE

2. YES

3. NO

Now here are the long answers:

1. It's not just the economy that's making us all nervous - the Productivity Commission has put everyone distinctly on edge, as none of us knows if we'll have jobs next year. However, children's publishing is resilient in times of economic downturn. I think your problem is not so much the economy as it is the genre you've chosen. You wouldn't believe how many children's fantasy manuscripts are floating around out there ... It is, by far, the largest single genre (out of adults' and children's books) that I see. So you really need to have an outstanding manuscript that is not at all derivative of anything else out there - especially the boy wizard - in order to rise above the pack.

2. and 3. Yes, you're blowing your only chance because you do only get one shot at submitting to agents and publishers. We only ever look at something twice if we've asked to see it again after a rewrite. Most of us - probably all of us - keep records of submissions and will be able to tell if you've resubmitted after a rejection. People try it, but my answer to them is still 'no'.

I've written a few posts about patience and impatience - there's even a label for it at right. It's really worth being patient - not necessarily because of the economy, but for the sake of your own writing. Before you send it out again, make sure your manuscript is as good as it can be. That usually means being patient and not looking at it for a while.

Writing for credit

In the query letters you’ve reviewed you talk about including credits and the need to assert yourself as a ‘bona fide’. So my question is what if you don’t have any writing credits? Would you consider a first time author who had nothing else to hang their hat on but a passion for their craft? Is being a good writer enough? Also I write romance/ contemporary chick lit – so how do I prove I’m qualified to write in this genre? It’s not like you can do a PhD in broken hearts, there’s no Romance 101 taught in any legitimate learning facility that I’m aware of. To some simply being a woman whose experienced her fair share of love and heart break might be enough to make me a ‘bona fide’ for this style of writing but I more interested in what the industry standard is. If you’re a first time writer, other then writing a good novel what else can one do to improve their chances of getting published?

This is a very good point and, again, makes me examine my own query letter–reading mindset.

In JJ Cooper's letter he says that his novel is a thriller about a military interrogator - this is quite a specialised area, so it's great if he has some knowledge about it, which he says he does - that is, he's established his credentials in this specialised field of knowledge. Likewise, if someone's writing non-fiction about, say, the life cycle of the bee, it's best if the writer is an apiarist or bee scientist. So the 'bona fides' really matters when you're writing the sort of book that people will notice a lack of real detail: novels about the military or the police, for example, even about championship tennis - it's hard to write about a culture if you're completely outside of it. The Devil Wears Prada wouldn't have worked if the author knew nothing about the fashion industry.

If you write chick lit, you're correct: you don't need the same kind of background knowledge.

However, regardless of what you're writing, the manuscript needs to be excellent. And most manuscripts don't get to be excellent if the author has not put a lot of work into them. So when I'm looking for writing 'credits' I'm not necessarily looking for a degree in creative writing - in fact, that qualification can sometimes make me run screaming away from the submission - but I am looking for some evidence that you haven't sent me your first draft. That may mean that you say 'I've been writing for five years and have started two novels, but this is the first I've seen to fruition. I've spent a fair bit of time with it, and this is the third draft.' And that, as far as I'm concerned (I can't speak for others), is writing credit. You've done time in the trenches. You haven't just dashed off something in five days and decided to submit it just to see how it goes. A lot of writers won't mention previous (unpublished) novels or stories but I think they should - it's part of their own story. And your own story is what makes you different from the twenty other chick lit writers whose submissions I may be reading on the same day.

Query letters - the main points

Reviewing the query letters has been helpful for me - yes, it's all about my needs, not yours - as it's forced me to examine how I make decisions when I'm reading letters. And the main points I've gleaned are these:

1. If I like the sound of the story, I'm prepared to overlook missing information in the query letter - therefore, the story needs to be described well.

2. If I like the sound of the author, I'm prepares to overlook a query letter that is otherwise lacking. Liking the author doesn't mean liking their biographical information - it means liking their tone. A lot of query letters read the same - with a flat tone - and that's probably because writers are taking them seriously, which is fair and reasonable. But an author who shows me a bit of personality - an 'I love' or 'I'm passionate about' or 'I came up with the idea for this novel while standing on my head' - is going to make me want to read what they've written.

3. I often work on instinct and there's some stuff I just can't empirically break down about why I like some letters and not others. The authors I've found in the slush pile have all - without exception - had fantastic letters. I got a feeling when I read the letter and then it was borne out when I read the manuscript. Wonderful writers always write wonderfully, regardless of whether it's a query letter or a novel or an email.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is: don't be too rigid in your letters. The basic structure is: describe the story, tell me why I should read it and tell me a bit about you, and write the letter as if you're writing to someone you want to start a relationship with. The agent-author relationship ideally endures for years, and we're all human - we all respond to emotional cues, even in business (perhaps especially in business) - so when someone sends a query letter that makes me laugh or makes me feel like they have a wildly beating heart, it makes me want to work with them. It makes me want to work on their manuscript to get it ready for submission. It doesn't matter so much if their novel isn't 'perfect'.

In the US query letters are often the only thing an agent will look at first up; in Australia we tend to ask for chapters as well. So the query letter in Australia probably isn't as critical, but it's still important. It's my first introduction to an author I may well end up working with - and it's always a thrill when I get that feeling - you know, that feeling - when I read a letter and suspect that it may just have been written by an author whose work I'm going to LOVE.

What Not to Do when Submitting

This week I was going through some submissions to the agency and growing more and more en couleur due to a few small things which, collectively, really annoyed me. When an agent or editor is getting annoyed reading a submission becase of some easily avoidable things a writer has done, it makes us less disposed to like their submission. Having said that, I’ve found that there’s a direct relationship between dodgy cover letters and dodgy writing almost 100% of the time. And if someone’s writing is great, I’m prepared to forgive them for making a mistake in their submission.

Still, a lot of you who send submissions to agencies have been writing for years and have all your hopes pinned on your first novel – it would be a shame to ruin your chances when you really don’t need to. Accordingly, here’s my list of What Not to Do when Submitting.

1. Don’t ignore the agent’s (or publisher’s) submission guidelines. If they ask for a cover letter, a short biography of you, a synopsis and the first three chapters, don’t decide you know better and that you’ll just send the synopsis and the first three chapters, and forget the rest. The first thing we think is, ‘This person can either not read or doesn’t think they should have to do the same thing as everyone else’. If you can’t read, you’re not going to be a good writer. If you think you don’t have to do whatever everyone else has to do, we’re going to presume you’re either rude or arrogant and we won’t want to work with you. Possible redemption: your first three chapters are outstanding, thus leading us to believe you left out the cover letter by mistake because clearly you are a wonderful writer. But they need to be OUTSTANDING.

2. If you do ignore the submission guidelines, do not then acknowledge the fact and give a reason. I have seen far too many cover letters which say, ‘I know you wanted the first three chapters but I really think you’ll want to read the whole manuscript, so here it is.’ (No! I don’t want to read the whole thing unless I ask you for it! I have a hundred manuscripts here already!) Then there are the ones that say, ‘I know you wanted a synopsis but I just can’t write one, so I’m not sending one.’ (If you can’t write a synopsis we’re going to have serious doubts about your first three chapters.) Submission guidelines are not set up to torture writers – they exist to help agents order things, and to put boundaries around that first contact from a writer. If we didn’t have them, every writer would send in their full manuscript and we’d run out of oxygen in the office. Possible redemption: none.

3. In your cover letter, do not say that your manuscript is ‘like Dan Brown’s’ or ‘will be read by Di Morrissey’s readers’ or is ‘as sophisticated as Ian McEwan’s novels’. If you compare yourself to a bestselling author you’ll always come off second best. It’s quite all right to mention some writers you like and whose style you admire, but don’t compare yourself to them. Possible redemption: see point 1.

4. In your cover letter, do not say that you are ‘the greatest undiscovered writer in the world’. Moreover, do not threaten that we’ll ‘deeply regret it’ if we don’t take you on. Possible redemption: none.

5. In your cover letter, do not use the term 'fictional novel' to describe what you've sent. A novel is fiction, by its very definition. Use of the term 'fictional novel' makes us think that you've never read a novel before and are not sure what it is - this is not a good impression to convey if what you're submitting is, in fact, a novel, and it's an even worse impression if what you're submitting is actually non-fiction. Possible redemption: see point 1.

6. If we request your full manuscript, don’t forget to include a cover letter. Sometimes manuscripts come in months after we ask for them and we’re not going to remember whether we requested it or not. Possible redemption: actually not that serious an offence.

7. Do not call or email asking if we have received the submission. We get a lot of submissions each week – if each writer called to ask if we received the submission, we’d never get anything else done. We understand that you’re anxious about your submission, but please respect the fact that we’re trying to run a business. Possible redemption: if another agent has said they want to represent you (but don’t fib about this!) so you need to know our response sooner rather than later.

8. Do not call or email two weeks after submitting to ask if we’ve read it yet. This is probably the greatest annoyance of all and the one most likely to make us not look favourably on your submission. Thinking that it takes two weeks to read a submission indicates that the writer has a complete lack of awareness about how publishing works, and also a lack of awareness that there are other people in the world. Certainly, if it’s been three months and the agency had said they’d get back to you in six weeks, put in a call. But not after two weeks. And certainly not the next day (yes, it happens). Possible redemption: usually none. Although if you do turn out to be the next Ian McEwan, we’ll change our minds.

A lot of this is going to sound harsh, but when we're looking at fifty submissions in a row, these details become amplified. There are so many other writers submitting - don't distinguish yourself by doing all the wrong things, and don't ruin your chances of getting an agent or publisher by behaving as if submission guidelines don't apply to you. Yes, it's a bit like being at school. But we have to keep order somehow!