How NOT To Be A Douche Bag Author 101

Hey there! Welcome back to my bi-weekly (I know I said it would be weekly, but I lied) edition of HNTBADBA101, wherein I attempt to educate hapless writers about the pitfalls of dealing with the wacky publishing world.

Today's edition is called...Follow the Fucking Guidelines.

Our romance imprint, Awe-Struck Publishing, recently opened for submissions. If you would like to send me some AWESOME romance, please view the guidelines here: http://www.awe-struck.net/submissions.html

And then...FOLLOW those same guidelines.

You see, editors have to deal with thousands of manuscripts. If everyone formatted things whatever way they felt like and included whatever information they wanted to, it would make it a lot more time consuming to go through.

This is half of the reason why publishers have guidelines.

You see, if you send me the manuscript in docx, not all of the readers can open it. If you don't include the name of your manuscript in the file name or cover page of the book, it'll be confusing if someone gets the book for a full read. If you fail to send us a synopsis, we won't know if we'll like your book or not (and contrary to popular belief, that won't entice us to read the book to find out). If we can't easily find the genre, title, and word count in your cover letter, it makes it hard for us to the log the submission.

Guidelines are there to make our job easier. I know, I know, the editing staff is actually Eeevul and they should just be happy that you sent your Speshul manuscript to them in first place.

Well, here's the thing: would you like us to be able to decide on your manuscript faster or slower?

I'll let you think about it.

Every time you, the author, choose to do something that is going to cost us MORE time, you're slowing down the slush evaluation process for EVERYONE.

Some authors don't seem to care about this. They are douche bags.

Now, I said that only half of it was to make our lives easier.

The other half?

So we know if you're an idiot or not.

"Oh, whine whine, Skyla is calling writers names. She's so evil." I'm sorry, but it's NOT difficult to a) look at the publisher's guidelines, b) READ them, and c) follow them. If you can't do that, you're not just a douche bag--you're a fucking moron.

DON'T just trust marketplace listings that you find at a third party site. DON'T just trust your friend who sent you the email address of a publisher.

First, open Google. That's "www.google.com" Type in the name of the publisher. The website is probably called www.thepublisher'sname.com Go to that site and look for the words "submissions" or "for authors". Trust me, if it's a publisher's site, they have something like that. See all those nifty guidelines there? Print out a copy and follow them TO THE LETTER.

If you're not sure about formatting (should I use a double dash or an em dash?), and it doesn't specify, then it doesn't matter. But if it DOES say something, like, say, put the synopsis in the body of the email, attach in RTF, and include certain information at the top of your cover letter, for god's sake, DO IT.

Seriously, if you can follow guidelines, an editor is going to at least know that you pay attention and care enough about the business to make a good first impression. Do you know how many contracted authors I have to deal with who don't read a fucking word I say and ask the same questions over and over again? If I can weed those people out ahead of time for not following guidelines, I sure as hell do.

Yes, we all know that you're going to send the book to lots of publishers. And it's a total pain in the ass to have two dozen versions of your book and cover letter in My Documents that you send to all these different publishers. It feels like a waste of time. You wrote the damn book. You edited and rewrote it. Polished it. Became an alcoholic while writing the synopsis. Sobbed over your cover letter.

See, I get it. I know how you feel.

But, buck up, kiddies. You want to play ball? Get your shit together and play by the rules, or go home.

Publishers (and this rant applies to agent guidelines too) may seem like a dime a dozen, but if you can't be bothered to do the research to find out a) what they want, and b) how they want it sent to them, then don't come bitching to me that I rejected your Speshul Masterpiece.

A lot of writers don't follow even basic guidelines.

These people are douche bags.

Don't be one.

For past issues, please head here.