Please, God, let an agent read the manuscript this time.
My lean bank account and leaner Social Security check means it's time to submit my hilarious, dramatic novels to publishers, or agents. AGAIN. I have to figure out what writers are using as software nowadays, and what mode of print out that agents want. So I wrote to my sharewear dealer. "Dear Dan, RECESSION. I want to sell my stash of novels, I used to write one a year then got too poor to print them out and xerox them and mail them. Stamps being way way costly.. Printing out multiple copies of my novels, printing, laser inkjets at 50$ each, just when my Hewlett Packard laser is drying up, ink very faint now) then XEROXING the printed out novels, --all this is VERY COSTLY. WILL BUYERS please use my ONLINE set up? I can maybe publish in PDF online? How will agents and publishers take the raw product? On a CD rom? As a PDF file? I know that you sell every kind of software ever made, at 'nearly free' prices, I want to buy whatever it is that can create a submissable opus. Whacha got Danny my boy? Send me some PDF software so that I can submit my books to publishers!
Anita, he answered. "A universal way of everyone being able to read stuff is PDF. The easiest way to make a PDF is to download a program called CutePDF from http://cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp
The download links are on the left side of the Web page. You only need the "Free Download" because when it's installed it automatically downloads Free Converter (make sure you're connected to the Net when you install it)."
"What CutePDF does is act like a printer. Anything you can print from any program you already have can be made into a PDF file instead of printing to paper. It's really slick. It shows up in your list of printers. When you're ready to print something from one of your programs just select CutePDF instead of your printer. It will pop up a window asking where you want to save your PDF and what file name to call it. You can upload your PDF's to your site for all to see.And best of all, it's free! "
What a kindly man. When did you last go to a hospital to remove a splinter
and they said here, free tweezers, this is how you do it, go home
and do it yourself when they could have charged a million dollars? So use
his services:
http://www.danielsays.com/dlcc-the-rise-and-fall-of-d2ca.html
"My new site is here to stay as long as I am able to maintain it. It still has my “world-famous” Screen Shot Gallery (visited by people from 199 countries and counting!) and my Microsoft® Bob™ Exhibit, not to mention my PDF “catalogs” listing all the old software I’ve collected so far and continue to add to. " He's too shy to tell you but THE ANCIENT VINTAGE MACHINES pictured are a delight.
Next, I wrote some of my tekkie and writer chums. "Any other tips on how we writers are supposed to submit?"
A Gallery owner / writer webpage maker from London told me: "
Writers' agents are a peculiar breed of humans and are mostly very set
in their ways. Those that have embraced computer tech like to read up to
three paragraphs of the manuscript, in 1.5 to double line spacing, plus
a brief synopsis and sometimes a CV & Bio. Those animals still set
in their old ways, (young or old), 'need' to have paper copies similar
to the above. If you don't supply the requirements for either of the two
above types your proposal will automatically be binned. No CDs, no zip
drives, no stapled or bound manuscripts, no ready-bound books; they will
all be binned. So the
important work is for the author to thoroughly read the website requirements
of 'each' agent and submit according to their individual requirements,
and of course, a covering letter specifically addressed to each agent.
The wholesale 'submit all' approach with a stereotyped letter will automatically
be binned. Agents are mostly arrogant b'stards thinking that they are the
Prima Donna. They are, but so are we all.
SO I asked, "then what you're saying is --when Agent finally says that he will read the rest of the book, I send it printed out? Or maybe in PDF? I drummed my fingers, waiting for that answer from him. Basically he's saying use that laser ink jet cartridge. I have ne. In pckg, somewhere --I have to clean the house to find it, clean closets.
HE ANSWERED: "What I wrote is a concise breakdown of what I have read across the websites of over a hundred writers' agents and what I am involved in right now. Only after an agent has read your submission, (as previously described), and requests that you send the whole manuscript, should you send it - and according to their instructions. If they want the whole manuscript in 1.5 or double line spacing, then that is what one should do. But also the following that I previously omitted:
All pages should be numbered.
Add the author's name, address, telephone number and email address at the top of the first page.
(Although I have formatted each page with that information.)
Add the copyright symbol and the year after the title of the work and your name on the first page.
The writer should procure for himself/herself a copy of the Artists'
& Writers' Year Book, (or the
equivalent American book), where all the guidance is given. It is important
to bear in mind that because there are hundreds of thousand attempting
the same thing - to get published, writers' agents receive between four
to six thousand submissions a year, obviously depending upon the size of
the agency. Their replies may take between six weeks to three months."
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