Therefore, formatting a submission to reflect one’s publication preferences on matters like font (which is the publishing house’s decision, anyway, not the author’s) will not strike the pros as a creative choice, but a reflection of a misunderstanding of how publishing works - and an indication that the writer has not yet taken the time to learn the rules of submission.
#Book manuscript format professional
The short answer: because Millicent will take your writing more seriously if you format it as she expects to see it - that is, the way that professional book manuscripts are formatted.Īnd why might she respond better to that than a more creatively-presented set of pages, murmurers? Is it time to trot out the broken record again?Ī manuscript should not resemble a published book in many important respects. That’s a good question, murmuring aesthetes. “So I’m asking you as a friend, Anne: if I believe my writing looks best in a special font like Abadi MT Condensed Extra Bold, and it’s how I want my words to look in the published book, why shouldn’t I run with it in a submission? Surely, Millicent can look past a little originality of presentation while she is seeking originality in writing.” The pages look so plain! These rules are stepping all over my right to creative expression. As Odysseus no doubt said to his sailors and soldiers on the way home from the Trojan War, I know that it feels as though we’ve been on this journey forever, but it can’t be much farther now.īut hark! Do I hear some discontented murmuring amongst aesthetes out there in the ether? “But Anne,” visually-oriented aspiring writers murmur under their breath, so as not to attract the wrath of their nemesis, Millicent the agency screener, “my objection is not so much to the sheer length of time we’ve spent going over the strictures of standard format for book manuscripts - not to be confused with the formatting norms for short stories, magazine articles, screenplays, or any other kind of writing intended for professional submission - but to what I feel these rules are doing to my personal style. In the meantime, let’s get back to the matter at hand: the proper formatting of book manuscripts. Please bear with me while I painstakingly go back and refocus ‘em. If s/he did - hey, who am I to impose gender norms on higher beings? - all of the formerly fuzzy page shots would have magically clarified themselves in the course of this upgrade. Who, I gather, does not hobnob much with the Muses.
It’s still going to take me a while to go back through the literally thousands of pages of archival posts, making sure that they’re taking kindly to all of the new bells and whistles, but in theory, the bulk of my blogging time will no longer be sacrificed on the altar of the Internet Deity.
#Book manuscript format upgrade
If you’ve been hearing the Muses tap-dancing on the floor of heaven today, I think I know why: at long last, Author! Author!’s epic behind-the-scenes site upgrade has officially drawn to a close.
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