Literary Magnet

Creative Byline’s online manuscript submission service won’t launch until later this fall, but when it does, here’s how the process will work for writers.

Step 1: Join Creative Byline (free, for a limited time) and post your writer profile—whatever you want editors to know about you. You can post a bio, credentials, awards and memberships, and (if you’ve already been published) covers of your previously published books.

Step 2: Pay a nominal fee and, using our template, upload your query package (cover letter, synopsis, chapter outline, and first three chapters) to Creative Byline, where a first reader will make sure it meets our quality standards. The first reader is not making a judgment call on whether or not it’s publishable—only that it meets certain standards. If your manuscript doesn’t make the cut, you’ll be told why. You’ll then have the opportunity to resubmit to a different first reader—although we do recommend that you revise before doing so, to increase the likelihood the manuscript will be accepted.

Step 3: When your manuscript passes Step 2, you can either submit directly and exclusively to an editor who is a match for what you have to offer (the option we recommend) or submit your manuscript to our “reading room,” which is like a library of manuscripts that editors can search using keywords and other criteria. Creative Byline is a closed and secure system: Only subscribing editors will be able to see your query package.

Step 4: Log in to Creative Byline to check on the status of your manuscript. You’ll be able to see if an editor has viewed your query package and/or downloaded your manuscript. When you submit to a specific editor, he or she has an exclusive on that manuscript for three weeks. If the editor doesn’t view your query package within three weeks, you can submit to the next editor for no additional charge. You can continue to do this until an editor views your query package.

That’s the Creative Byline guarantee: Your query package will be viewed by the editor you submitted to within three weeks or you get to submit the query package to another editor at no additional charge. Creative Byline puts an end to the black hole of submissions!

Step 5: If an editor is interested in your manuscript, the editor will contact you directly,  and you and the editor take it from there.

So how much is all this going to set you back, exactly? We’ll talk about that in an upcoming post.