Literary Magnet » How does it work for authors?

How many times can I submit?

creativebyline — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 19:41:38 +0000

One of our early clients gave us kudos in his comment and asked a good question: If after two attempts a manuscript still doesn’t pass our first reader’s quality check, what next? We recommend that you take some time to hone your writing skills in the areas that first readers mentioned in their feedback. You can start with our list of writers’ resources, which is accessible to members (membership is free right now). Read a book on plot, attend a relevant conference, take an online class, find a critique group. After you’ve applied what you’ve learned to your manuscript, you can submit to Creative Byline again, for a fee. Basically, every other time is free, and you can submit to Creative Byline for as long as you want, continuing to get feedback every time.

We want you to succeed—not just to become a published writer but to become a better writer. Toward that end, we’re working to make the “writer” section of Creative Byline more robust. Stay tuned.

All about first readers

creativebyline — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 15:45:46 +0000

Someone recently asked us who our first readers are. Eighty percent of first readers have some type of advance writing or literature degree. They work at the direction of Creative Byline’s editorial director using specific criteria, which we’ll talk more about in a later post. We’ll supplement those readers with readers who have specialties. Most large publishing houses have also used first readers in order to lighten the editors’ loads and get through the backlog of slush. Like those first readers, our first readers do not judge whether or not a manuscript is good enough to be published—only whether it meets certain quality standards.

If a first reader rejects a manuscript, the writer will be given a basic explanation of why. This is more than most writers get under the current submission process, since there are not enough hours in the day for editors to respond to every one of the manuscripts they receive every year. Second, the writer may re-submit that manuscript once to Creative Byline at no additional cost, and we’ll route it to a different first reader. We recommend that the writer use the first-reader feedback to revise the piece before resubmitting, but that’s totally up to the writer.

Next question?

The beauty of Creative Byline for editors

creativebyline — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 13:00:54 +0000

It’s audacious of us to think we can change the submission process—or it would be, if we hadn’t done our homework. But we have. And we know that editors really do want to receive manuscripts, but only certain kinds of manuscripts, i.e., the ones they happen to be looking for at the moment. So we developed a process that delivers exactly that by filtering out manuscripts editors don’t want to see at the moment.

• First readers filter out manuscripts that don’t meet quality standards.
• Our proprietary software filters out manuscripts that are inappropriate to the house. For example, it won’t allow coffee table books to be submitted to a house that publishes only novels.
• Editors create profiles for themselves and set their preferences about what they want to see. Each preference set results in an additional filter. For example, an editor could indicate she’s looking for mysteries—and she’d get lots of submissions. Or she could indicate she’s looking for “mysteries” that are also “young adult” and she’d get far fewer submissions. Editors can change their preferences any time, and the system immediately responds, allowing through manuscripts that meet the new criteria.

Wait. It gets even better. As part of his profile, an editor can also indicate how often he wants to be informed that there are new manuscripts in the system matching his preferences. If he chooses weekly, then once a week our system will generate an e-mail to him with a list of the manuscripts that fit his preferences and a link to each one. He clicks on the link, which takes him to the manuscript query package, where he can read as little (cover letter) or as much (e.g., synopsis or first three chapters) as he wants. In this way, Creative Byline makes reviewing query packages a part of an editor’s workflow.

Why do you care if Creative Byline is great for editors? Because if it’s not great, they won’t use it. And if they won’t use it, you’re stuck with the old way, submitting your story to an editor that you heard might be interested in what you have (although that could change by the time he gets around to reading your manuscript), and waiting six to twelve months for a form rejection. Is that what you really want?

We didn’t think so.

How to submit a manuscript using Creative Byline (when it goes live)

creativebyline — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 00:07:22 +0000

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.