How do you present the perfect pitch for your book to a publisher? It’s a fact of publishing life that editors are inundated with proposals from authors, many wanting to be published for the first time. So how do you make your submission (a pitch to a publisher for your fiction or factual book) stand out? Martin Hickman, Managing Editor of non-fiction publisher Acropolis Publishing, gives some tips for avoiding some common mistakes.
1. Target the right publisher
It’s an error to send your proposal to every single publisher that you think might conceivably be interested in your book. Such scattergun tactics rarely succeed. It’s much better to identify which publishers are most likely to like your proposal. Look at what they have published previously and read the trade press (The Bookseller and BookBrunch in the UK), to find out what new subject areas or genres publishers are moving into.
2. Comply with the submission guidelines
Once you have found your target publishers, look up to see how they like to receive pitches. Most publishers have a new authors or submissions page setting out what sort of material they are looking for in a pitch. At our main trade imprint, Canbury Press, for instance, we like to see:
- an introductory letter stating who you are and what your book is about
- a summary of what similar books exist already and why yours is special
- a list of chapters
- one or two draft chapters, including the first chapter
Do not send something that a publisher has not asked for, such as your whole book or a photograph of you doing the gardening.
3. Personalise your pitch
My biggest tip is this: tailor your pitch every single time. Addressing your email to ‘Dear Editor’, ‘Dear Publisher’ or ‘Dear Literary Agent’ is a failsafe way of shrinking your credibility. If you can’t be bothered to find out who you are writing to, then an editor may – will – presume that your writing is correspondingly lazy. Better to write ‘Dear [insert publishing company]’. Even better do some research and address your email to a named individual at a publishing house, either an editor (best) or an editorial assistant (this may actually work better, if you can get a name.) Similarly, do not send the same standard letter every time: every publishing house and editor has a slightly different approach. Experienced editors can spot a template letter 1.60934km (a mile…) off. Graft and personalise your pitch to the publisher.
4. Use the right terminology
You may not be a professional writer (or you may be), but if you are pitching your book to a commercial publisher you will be expected to use the correct terminology. We sometimes receive proposals for non-fiction books referring to the author’s ‘novel’: novels are fictional books. Similarly, romance books are not normally ‘thrillers’ (even if breathily fast-paced). Your new novel may be a quicksilver work of genius, but you will be wasting your time if you describe it as a work of non-fiction.
5. Write into the body of an email
A common mistake new authors make is to write long screeds of text into an email explaining – often convolutedly – what their book is about. Writing more than 500 words in the body of an email is never a good idea. But going the opposite way and just including your attachments with your cover letter and chapters is not great either. Your email should pithily set out what your book is about and why the publisher might want to publish it. This should be a good few sentences, constructed tautly to demonstrate your flair and precision. What you write in the email is the hook: your attachments should reel in an editor.
I hope these tips steer you away from some of the common blunders when writers submit books to publishers. Being an author is very satisfying and worth striving for. I wish you the best of luck with your proposal.
Martin Hickman
Managing Editor
Acropolis Publishing