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Inside Simon & Schuster: A Publishing
Story and its related articles,
Submitting the
Manuscript, Acquiring the Manuscript,
Editing the Manuscript, and
Marketing and
Sales, were published in their original form in Writer's Digest in 1998 and later reprinted in the
1998 Writer's Yearbook Extra. I revised and significantly expanded the story for online publication.
Where to Submit
Sarah includes Simon & Schuster on her submission list because it's a big, rich house with many prize-winning and bestselling authors. She can choose between the different divisions or submit to them all.
There are more divisions at S&S but these five are representative of the range of publishing possibility there.
Agents are free to submit to as many of the divisions as they want to but with the understanding that there is only going to be one offer. This is often frustrating for agents who'd prefer to have each division bid independently but S&S doesn't want its divisions competing with each other financially.
Policies vary from company to company but Sarah probably faces a similar problem if she sends a hardcover submission to
- Seven divisions at HarperCollins Publishers:
HarperCollins Trade, HarperBusiness, HarperReference, Harper San Francisco,
HarperPrism, ReganBooks, Cliff Street Books;
- Six divisions in the Random House Group:
Random, Knopf, Crown, Harmony, Villard, Ballantine; or
- Four divisions in the Penguin/Putnam Group:
Putnam, Viking, Dutton, Penguin
- Four divisions in the BDD Group:
Bantam, Doubleday, Delacorte, Broadway
- Two divisions in the Time Warner Group:
Warner or Little, Brown
- Many other options.
Other publishers may be jointly owned but still compete with each other because they are operated independently. Farrar, Straus &
Giroux, Henry Holt; and St. Martin's Press are an example.
Beyond this, publishers are defined by the types of books they publish, and it's important for you or your agent to find the publishers that are most likely to respond to your book because they're already publishing in that area, whether mystery, biography, how-to, or suspense.
If SHATTERED Were a Novel
If the book had been written and sold as an autobiographical novel, instead of nonfiction, some aspects of the submission and publishing process would be different, and in these sidebars I will from time to time point out what these differences might be.
For example, Sarah would not have submitted SHATTERED to The Free Press or Touchstone/Fireside because they don't publish fiction.
Also, competing books are less of a factor in fiction. For example, two thrillers aren't going to compete with each other as directly as two diet books for women.
While nonfiction is often sold on the basis of an outline and sample chapters because it's the basic subject and information that are most important, fiction is usually sold as a complete manuscript because only in the full writing out of the story can the novel really be judged.
How You Can Contribute
You can help your agent by passing along any current information you've found about appropriate houses and editors. The closer your book matches up with their interests, the more likely you are to get the right response.
Also, especially with nonfiction, it's important to have researched the competition, prepared a list of competing books and described how your book is different. This helps the editor decide how much of a market there may be for your book.
See all the other Publishing Hints or the Writing
Secrets
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