| Electronic Submissions to Book Publishers |
| Question: Is there any source available for book publishers who accept electronic submissions? -- John Clark
Answer: Most publishers will accept a query letter by email, but I don't know of any serious book editor at a publisher who would take unsolicited submissions of manuscripts. That would be very unwise of them since it would suck up all of their email bandwidth and make it impossible to get meaningful communications with authors. Any editor or publisher who says they accept unsoliticed electronic submissions is a vanity publisher or print-on-demand publisher. Either might be fine for your manuscript but if you want a major bookstore publisher to accept your manuscript, start by sending an email query only. Email and snaill mail addresses for hundreds of publishers of children's books, cookbook, health books, business books, first novels, and sports books are on my BookMarket.com web site. Send queries only. No more than two pages in the email text itself. No attachments. -- John Kremer |


















6 Comments:
Hi John - pls tell me more about your comment about 80% of books being sold by word of mouth. Thanks, Centime
The number 80% of all book sales are made as a result of word-of-mouth is a number I heard once. I don't remember who said it or how they came by that number. But the number makes sense to me, in my own experience of publishing as well as my experience with so many other publishers and authors.
Is the number right? Gee, I don't know. But it is good enough to be right. Creating word-of-mouth is essential to good book promotion.
John, it's great to see you now have a blog as well as your newsletter! RE. unsolicitated submissions by email, you're absolutely right. Submitting by email without prior permission is one way to brand yourself an amateur in the eyes of a publisher and ruin any future chances of publishing with them. However, once a writer has written for a certain publisher, it's not uncommon to turn in future manuscripts strictly by email. I haven't used a postage stamp for years, except for returning contracts.
Many publishers will accept queries by email, but I sure wouldn't take the risk and guess. Check writer's resources (Writer's Market online is a great example, and is updated regularly--well worth the annual fee for access) to be sure before taking that leap.
~Bonnie~
Great blog here! I'm definitely going to bookmark you! I have a bulk leads site. It pretty much covers bulk leads related stuff.
Come and check it out if you get time :-)
Actually Baen Books prefers electronic submissions, and I think there are a number of other small publishers who do also.
Yes, Baen and many publishers will accept electronic submissions, but few will take unsolicited submissions. They couldn't reasonably accept such submissions via email. They might accept such submissions via a form on their website.
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