Submitting Your Manuscript for Publication
So you’ve written your book and are ready to submit it for publishing. It’s just a case of sending it to the publishers who’ll bind it all up and send it to the printer.
Well that’s what I thought anyway, but as it turns out there’s a lot of preparation to be done before submitting a final manuscript, and I’m not talking about proof reading and checking – that has already been done. What I’m talking about is structuring your book in an electronic format that the publishers will accept straight away.
For instance – our manuscript had been written with double spacing, was written in Microsoft Works and just contained the main body of the story. What would the title page look like? Where do you write your endorsements and dedications? What font type do you want to use? What page size is it going to be printed for? And so on…
These were all the questions I were suddenly faced with prior to submitting ‘The Brindavan Chronicle’ and as it turned out – it took a few days of re-jigging the manuscript to get it ready for the publishers. The greatest problem and one I cannot stress more than enough for others in the same position is substituting tabs for spaces especially for paragraph indentation. Using the space bar to position text is apparently a cardinal sin in the publication world due mainly to its potential to throw off the layout of the book in print.
Thankfully, Authorhouse have a pretty comprehensive guide to submission and I followed this very detailed manuscript preparation guideline before finally submitting the manuscript at the end of last week.
Now, the publication process is in swing I’m now in anticipation of going through the front cover design. I’ll update next week with regard to how that is going…
Who would have thought that so much work is involved? Having embarked on this journey, I do appreciate the Family Venture; with Nesh taking so much effort and interest and with Gaya\’s input in keeping our business updated. Thank you!