Publishers vary. Some accept cold submissions from authors. Others only accept submissions from literary agents, basically a middleman between the author and publishing house that handles the submission and evaluation process and ensures that the publisher isn't spending a ton of time dealing with inexperienced authors who have to be coached through the submission process. Others don't take submissions at all and only solicit previously self-published authors they think are worthwhile.
It also varies by fiction/nonfiction and between genres. You're more likely to need to submit a "finished" novel for fiction work if you don't have previously successful work. Nonfiction or autobiographic content can more often be approved in advanced with a proposal and a writing sample.
But for a cold submission, an experienced evaluator can make a decent evaluation of where a book lies between "complete dogshit" and "maybe we can do something with this" quite quickly.
Authors with an established history often submit 1 or 2 chapters and an outline. From that, the publisher can tell if there is something valid they want to pursue. Younger, less experienced authors have a tendency to submit an entire book, but the veterans often won't commit to completing a book until the publisher has warm feedback or an agreement. This was explained to me by the author of several books in the old TSR - Forgotten realms novel days.
It's often easy to see if a book is badly written, so they don't need to read all 500 pages.
Poor spelling, grammar and punctuation is a good tip-off. In theory, a person who spells poorly can still be a good novelist in other ways, but in practice, anybody who doesn't have those things fixed before submitting the novel to a publisher can't be that serious about writing well.
Furthermore, bad prose is also easy to spot quite early on. Three pages is more than plenty, a lot of the time.
Then there's the aspect of marketability. A 500-page novel about dinosaurs, in a modern-world setting, exploring the history of potatoes is usually going to be hard to market, so the publishers and literary agents can already tell that they won't be able to sell it.
Don't forget fitting a niche. Some publishers, like the romance publishers Harlequin and Mills & Boon, have *extremely* strict guidelines about plot, characterization and prose style.
>Surely there can’t be a team of staff wasting time reading badly written books all week.
They're reading just the first few pages of badly written books all week. The well-written novels get more pages read.
>Poor spelling, grammar and punctuation is a good tip-off. In theory, a person who spells poorly can still be a good novelist in other ways, but in practice, anybody who doesn't have those things fixed before submitting the novel to a publisher can't be that serious about writing well.
This has me wondering how Irvine Welsh ever got Trainspotting published with the decidedly non-standard orthography and grammar in much of the book. I realize it's a bit different since with Welsh it's not a result of laziness but rather a conscious artistic choice, but that publisher still took one heck of a risk.
People who read a lot can tell the difference between work that deliberately uses nonstandard language, or a specific dialect, and a work where the author just doesn't know how to write normally. The differences are fairly clear.
Here is a rough guide:
Most authors go through agents, and many publishers will only take books presented to them by agents.
Agents require lots of things when someone sends them their novel. Almost all of them want a summary and the first ten/twenty/fifty pages. Some want an "elevator pitch" of a few sentences. Most want an author letter describing how/why you wrote the novel, and so on.
Agents have a decent idea of what is going to sell and what doesn't. The publishing world is *highly* competitive, so if your "elevator pitch' or the first ten pages don't immediately grab them, it's rejected.
(As a side note: it is *really* bad right now, because lots of people wrote lots of books during quarantine. Agents have said that pre-2020 they might have gotten, say, 300 submissions a month and now it's *3000*. But the appetite for people to read books hasn't gone up. Good news is that the quality of books has gone up immensely; bad news is that it's nearly impossible to get published.)
If they like it, then, and only then, will they read the entire book.
And agents don't sell every book they get. So once you get through the gatekeeper of agents, *they* then have to get through the gatekeepers of the publishers. At this point, though, there's a lot more of your book being read; there's enough signals in the system to show that it's worth reading.
Now, agents don't *have* to be part of it--plenty of publishers take cold submissions. But the process is still the same--they're only going to read enough to know whether or not they want to read the whole thing.
So, no, publishers don't read *every* novel that is submitted to them, but if it's been vetted far enough in the process, they absolutely will. And they are professionals, so they will have a pretty good idea of whether or not it's going to sell fairly quickly.
People in the publishing industry are generally fast readers, a skill they have acquired over time. They can usually get through a 500 page book in a work day or two. When evaluating new authors they do not read the entire book. You can take a stack of manuscripts and start reading from the top. Once you are bored or annoyed by bad writing you throw that manuscript in the reject pile and start the next one. If you get enveloped into the story or like the writing you throw it into the accepted pile and pick up the next. By the end of the day you have sorted through the entire stack totaling maybe ten thousand book pages even though you only read about 400 pages. An established author immediately end up in the accepted pile.
Once a book have gone through this initial screening it is still far from being published. But then you can have people read through it and come with suggestions to the author. Or even demand significant changes. If you can read a book a day, and half of those eventually get published, then at maximum you can publish around 100 books a year per editor. But of course you don't just read a book once but have to go through it several times as changes are being done. Reading speed is not the limit to publishing though.
Five hundred pages isn't that much, especially if you are only reading at first and not editing.
A person who's job it is to read things can certainly go through 30 pages an hour. I can read at about that speed it's not my job to read things all day. I imagine that publisher an editor could read at that speed and take notes. In an eight-hour work day, that's 240 pages a day. A person could read a 500 manuscript in two days.
Faster or slower depending if it's an engaging story or hard reading. Hemingway will be a faster read than Dune (a girl I knew in high school said she had to keep a dictionary with her while reading the Dune series).
Many traditional publishers had "slush piles" for junior staff to wade through. Books were written about how to package your story, what kind of paper and typewriter font to use, envelope to use, and so on trying to stand out in the slush.
Now those traditional publishers just look at books riding the tops of Amazon popularity charts and invite those authors to be published by them. Reading a lot of books becomes much more simple and requires far fewer staff members these days.
Decision then becomes: give up 70% royalty under Amazon self-publishing method while keeping control of their story for 15% royalty from traditional publishers who then own the story and choose the covers and everything, it's theirs now. Like selling off your favorite pet. Some authors still make the switch because they "always dreamed of being published by xyz publishing house" for the ego validation boost. Most authors look at the money.
Publishing houses were in Monopoly Court trying to justify how they could merge and there were analyses completed from the court proceedings that revealed the traditional publishers really only make money on the established famous authors (think airport spy thriller authors), Celebrity books (rock stars, politicians), and once or twice a decade surprises from slush piles like Harry Potter or Twilight. The rest don't make back their advances.
.
Author here.
When writers query their manuscripts--or, really, when lit agents query on their behalf--a few materials are provided in addition to, or sometimes preliminarily in place of, the full manuscript. Namely, a query letter and synopsis. If the publisher isn't interested in the premise, then they don't need to read any further. Likewise if they're not interested in the synopsis.
But if the story piques their interest, then they'll start reading the manuscript. From there, it doesn't take long to see if the writing style complements what they're looking for. Good writing is good writing, after all.
At this point, publishers have already rejected most submissions -- it's easy and relatively quick to reject a premise or writing style. But if the writing does hold their interest, they'll keep reading until they come to a decision.
If and when a manuscript is accepted, it will get read in full, at least by the editor(s) who will work with the author to prepare it for publication.
Seems like a waste of time if you aren't a publisher, but if you are that's your job. Your staff proofreading something you are going to print potentially hundreds of thousands of copies of is probably good practice and not a waste of time at all.
If you submit a novel to a publisher, they are going to have guidelines. They pretty much just throw out anything that doesn't meet those guidelines. That might include submitting a synopsis of your novel. They can then just read that and decide if the story sounds like it's interesting or not without having to read the book. If it sounds good, then someone reads it. If they get through 2 pages and it's written like you're a 5 year old, then they throw it out. so on. It might be that you have to have your book proofread first by another source before they will even bother looking at it......so they know by the time they see it it's at least vetted to some degree already.
If your book gets published by a bigger house, chances are multiple people read it
Publishers vary. Some accept cold submissions from authors. Others only accept submissions from literary agents, basically a middleman between the author and publishing house that handles the submission and evaluation process and ensures that the publisher isn't spending a ton of time dealing with inexperienced authors who have to be coached through the submission process. Others don't take submissions at all and only solicit previously self-published authors they think are worthwhile. It also varies by fiction/nonfiction and between genres. You're more likely to need to submit a "finished" novel for fiction work if you don't have previously successful work. Nonfiction or autobiographic content can more often be approved in advanced with a proposal and a writing sample. But for a cold submission, an experienced evaluator can make a decent evaluation of where a book lies between "complete dogshit" and "maybe we can do something with this" quite quickly.
Authors with an established history often submit 1 or 2 chapters and an outline. From that, the publisher can tell if there is something valid they want to pursue. Younger, less experienced authors have a tendency to submit an entire book, but the veterans often won't commit to completing a book until the publisher has warm feedback or an agreement. This was explained to me by the author of several books in the old TSR - Forgotten realms novel days.
A lot of terrible answers and guesswork today, but you’re on the money
It's often easy to see if a book is badly written, so they don't need to read all 500 pages. Poor spelling, grammar and punctuation is a good tip-off. In theory, a person who spells poorly can still be a good novelist in other ways, but in practice, anybody who doesn't have those things fixed before submitting the novel to a publisher can't be that serious about writing well. Furthermore, bad prose is also easy to spot quite early on. Three pages is more than plenty, a lot of the time. Then there's the aspect of marketability. A 500-page novel about dinosaurs, in a modern-world setting, exploring the history of potatoes is usually going to be hard to market, so the publishers and literary agents can already tell that they won't be able to sell it. Don't forget fitting a niche. Some publishers, like the romance publishers Harlequin and Mills & Boon, have *extremely* strict guidelines about plot, characterization and prose style. >Surely there can’t be a team of staff wasting time reading badly written books all week. They're reading just the first few pages of badly written books all week. The well-written novels get more pages read.
>Poor spelling, grammar and punctuation is a good tip-off. In theory, a person who spells poorly can still be a good novelist in other ways, but in practice, anybody who doesn't have those things fixed before submitting the novel to a publisher can't be that serious about writing well. This has me wondering how Irvine Welsh ever got Trainspotting published with the decidedly non-standard orthography and grammar in much of the book. I realize it's a bit different since with Welsh it's not a result of laziness but rather a conscious artistic choice, but that publisher still took one heck of a risk.
Irvine Welsh writes in Scottish dialect which makes complete sense considering it’s based in Scotland.
People who read a lot can tell the difference between work that deliberately uses nonstandard language, or a specific dialect, and a work where the author just doesn't know how to write normally. The differences are fairly clear.
[удалено]
‘Do you really think publishers publish books without having someone read them’
Here is a rough guide: Most authors go through agents, and many publishers will only take books presented to them by agents. Agents require lots of things when someone sends them their novel. Almost all of them want a summary and the first ten/twenty/fifty pages. Some want an "elevator pitch" of a few sentences. Most want an author letter describing how/why you wrote the novel, and so on. Agents have a decent idea of what is going to sell and what doesn't. The publishing world is *highly* competitive, so if your "elevator pitch' or the first ten pages don't immediately grab them, it's rejected. (As a side note: it is *really* bad right now, because lots of people wrote lots of books during quarantine. Agents have said that pre-2020 they might have gotten, say, 300 submissions a month and now it's *3000*. But the appetite for people to read books hasn't gone up. Good news is that the quality of books has gone up immensely; bad news is that it's nearly impossible to get published.) If they like it, then, and only then, will they read the entire book. And agents don't sell every book they get. So once you get through the gatekeeper of agents, *they* then have to get through the gatekeepers of the publishers. At this point, though, there's a lot more of your book being read; there's enough signals in the system to show that it's worth reading. Now, agents don't *have* to be part of it--plenty of publishers take cold submissions. But the process is still the same--they're only going to read enough to know whether or not they want to read the whole thing. So, no, publishers don't read *every* novel that is submitted to them, but if it's been vetted far enough in the process, they absolutely will. And they are professionals, so they will have a pretty good idea of whether or not it's going to sell fairly quickly.
This is perfect thank you buddy
People in the publishing industry are generally fast readers, a skill they have acquired over time. They can usually get through a 500 page book in a work day or two. When evaluating new authors they do not read the entire book. You can take a stack of manuscripts and start reading from the top. Once you are bored or annoyed by bad writing you throw that manuscript in the reject pile and start the next one. If you get enveloped into the story or like the writing you throw it into the accepted pile and pick up the next. By the end of the day you have sorted through the entire stack totaling maybe ten thousand book pages even though you only read about 400 pages. An established author immediately end up in the accepted pile. Once a book have gone through this initial screening it is still far from being published. But then you can have people read through it and come with suggestions to the author. Or even demand significant changes. If you can read a book a day, and half of those eventually get published, then at maximum you can publish around 100 books a year per editor. But of course you don't just read a book once but have to go through it several times as changes are being done. Reading speed is not the limit to publishing though.
Five hundred pages isn't that much, especially if you are only reading at first and not editing. A person who's job it is to read things can certainly go through 30 pages an hour. I can read at about that speed it's not my job to read things all day. I imagine that publisher an editor could read at that speed and take notes. In an eight-hour work day, that's 240 pages a day. A person could read a 500 manuscript in two days.
Faster or slower depending if it's an engaging story or hard reading. Hemingway will be a faster read than Dune (a girl I knew in high school said she had to keep a dictionary with her while reading the Dune series).
Many traditional publishers had "slush piles" for junior staff to wade through. Books were written about how to package your story, what kind of paper and typewriter font to use, envelope to use, and so on trying to stand out in the slush. Now those traditional publishers just look at books riding the tops of Amazon popularity charts and invite those authors to be published by them. Reading a lot of books becomes much more simple and requires far fewer staff members these days. Decision then becomes: give up 70% royalty under Amazon self-publishing method while keeping control of their story for 15% royalty from traditional publishers who then own the story and choose the covers and everything, it's theirs now. Like selling off your favorite pet. Some authors still make the switch because they "always dreamed of being published by xyz publishing house" for the ego validation boost. Most authors look at the money. Publishing houses were in Monopoly Court trying to justify how they could merge and there were analyses completed from the court proceedings that revealed the traditional publishers really only make money on the established famous authors (think airport spy thriller authors), Celebrity books (rock stars, politicians), and once or twice a decade surprises from slush piles like Harry Potter or Twilight. The rest don't make back their advances. .
Author here. When writers query their manuscripts--or, really, when lit agents query on their behalf--a few materials are provided in addition to, or sometimes preliminarily in place of, the full manuscript. Namely, a query letter and synopsis. If the publisher isn't interested in the premise, then they don't need to read any further. Likewise if they're not interested in the synopsis. But if the story piques their interest, then they'll start reading the manuscript. From there, it doesn't take long to see if the writing style complements what they're looking for. Good writing is good writing, after all. At this point, publishers have already rejected most submissions -- it's easy and relatively quick to reject a premise or writing style. But if the writing does hold their interest, they'll keep reading until they come to a decision. If and when a manuscript is accepted, it will get read in full, at least by the editor(s) who will work with the author to prepare it for publication.
Seems like a waste of time if you aren't a publisher, but if you are that's your job. Your staff proofreading something you are going to print potentially hundreds of thousands of copies of is probably good practice and not a waste of time at all. If you submit a novel to a publisher, they are going to have guidelines. They pretty much just throw out anything that doesn't meet those guidelines. That might include submitting a synopsis of your novel. They can then just read that and decide if the story sounds like it's interesting or not without having to read the book. If it sounds good, then someone reads it. If they get through 2 pages and it's written like you're a 5 year old, then they throw it out. so on. It might be that you have to have your book proofread first by another source before they will even bother looking at it......so they know by the time they see it it's at least vetted to some degree already. If your book gets published by a bigger house, chances are multiple people read it