Customer Reviews

Formatting & Submitting Your Manuscript (Writer's Market Library)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Because I write a lot of technical materials, I totally misinterpreted what an agent told me about sending in an outline. If I had not gotten this book I wouldn't have known that outlines for novels are very different from technical outlines. I verified this with people "in the know" and have started redoing my novel outline in the RIGHT format.

This is probably the best guide to document formatting I've seen yet. Of course, half the staff at Writers Digest magazine wrote it! Most of them are writers or editors as well, so it only makes sense that it would be good.

I looked at several different formatting books in my search for the best. Many of them got great reviews when they were released. The problem is, most of them are more than 5 years old. With the publishing business changing as rapidly as anything else these days, you need an updated resource to follow, especially if you are new to the business of writing - and yes, it is a business. In business, things are expected to be done a certain way, and this book shows you that way.

This book is chock full of full page examples of everything from proposals, cover letters, tables of contents, etc. It's broken down into sections like most of the other books, each one covering a topic such as articles, novels, and screenplays.

If you want a book that is easy to follow when formatting your manuscript and writing the associated correspondence to an editor/publisher/agent, this is the book for you. The example documents even show you how many spaces to leave between lines etc. I don't think they could have made it any easier if they had sent someone to my house and had them walk me through the formatting!

One thing I thought disappointing was mentioned by another reviewer. Personal essays is mentioned on the cover, but after a quick search, I wasn't able to find that topic covered at all in the book, even in the index. My guess is that it's assumed that these documents would be handled according to guidelines from a different section, although which section eludes me.

Overall, this is the best book out there. It's new, and covers the currently accepted formats for a plethora of documentation. If you're searching for a book like this, spend the money, it's well worth it.

This book is a great guide for those at the submission process! I would never have known that there were general guidelines to follow when submitting your fiction, etc and probably earned myself rejection letters because of it. But with this guide, I know that at least I used industry standards upon submissions.

This book also has great examples of query and cover letters. I recommend this to anyone new to the submission process of publishing!

I'm an essay writer, and on the cover it says, "A Visual Guide to Preparing and Presenting Your: Novels, Personal Essays, Articles and Proposals, Screenplays & TV Scripts, Short Stories, Poetry, Children's Picture Books, Greeting Cards, and more.

Well, guess what. Absolutely doodly-squat about essays of any kind, much less personal ones. I'm upset because this is the reason I got the book, to give me a floorplan for submission of my essays.

I already have an excellent book on formatting submissions written by Mary Lynn called "Every Page Perfect". I recommend this book; hers doesn't have anything on personal essays, either, but at least hers didn't SAY it did.

I don't give "Formatting & Submitting Your Manuscript" one star, because the book does have good information in it, IF you don't have Mary's book. Plus, there is information on e-querying in it that's not in Mary's book because the edition I have was written pre-Internet.

The authors and Writer's Market dropped the ball as far as I'm concerned. Their cover amounts to false advertising.

The authors of this book certainly know their business--how to format manuscripts, write query letters and design book proposals. The book has been my bible, encyclopedia, and dictionary for the last five or six years. I've used the sample query letters, book proposals, and manuscript formatting that I found in this book and sent my information to agents, editors and publishers.

I believe it was the query letter modeled after one of the book's samples that earned me a publisher's attention and eventually got my book, Mr. Jefferson' Piano and Other Central Harlem Stories, published.

When you buy this book, you'll find yourself returning to sections of it to use in your own writing as I did. This is the kind of book that does not grow old with time, instead it becomes even more useful with age.

Poorly designed query letters and manuscripts are a first point of rejection in a very tough business. FORMATTING & SUBMITTING YOUR MANSCRIPT is a must have reference book for every aspiring writers. The editors and writers of Writer's Digest have been in the business for many years and they know the necessary steps to avoid rejection as non-professional.
This important step is vital to your career. The well illustrated examples spell the correct and acceptable style for submissions of a novel, screen & TV scripts, plays, short stories, etc. A stylish submission will not insure acceptance, but it will foster consideration.
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Great resource for this aspiring writer. I am just approaching attempts at publication, and am grateful for this guidance on my way.

It may save you some rejections. The instructions are very clear, concise, and cover all ranges of manuscripts. Since I am working on submitting novels, this was the section I read the most thoroughly. There are two sample query letters to study, part of a synopsis, a cover letter, and lots on formatting the manuscript itself. I highly recommend this. You'll learn how to make your work look more professional and more appealing.

This book is all right as a basic guide on how a manuscript should more or less look, but the author fails to say, "By the way these aren't set in stone." For example, if you send in a screenplay I doubt it'll get turned away just based on how far down you spaced to start your first line (unless you did something silly like start at the bottom!). Good for an idea but don't let yourself take it as gospel.