Submitting Partials

If publishers want me to have my manuscript completed before I start shopping it around, why do they only want to see my first few chapters? In this electronic age, do you see publishers skipping the “sample chapters” step in the future? If I’m just sending a file, it doesn’t take up that much more room to send the whole thing.

The query letter and the synopsis show a publisher what you write. The partial—a partial manuscript, usually two or three chapters—shows a publisher how you write.

As a publisher, I want you to have your manuscript written and finished because it takes discipline and dedication to finish a novel. Especially if you’re a first-time author, I want to see that you have the ability and attention span to knock out all 80-100k of those words. I want to know that you’ve gotten to the end of the story, edited the heck out of it on your own, and already smoothed out any plot problems and conquered any writer’s block that might have happened along the way. I want to be able to slot you into my print schedule when I ask my boss to sign you, instead of being strung along waiting for you to finish writing the book. That doesn’t, however, mean that I need to see the whole book. I just need to know that it’s done.

You need to grab a reader with the first line. Usually, I know by the end of the first paragraph whether I’m interested in seeing more. If at the end of the first paragraph it’s still iffy, I’ll probably know by the end of the first page.

If the first page doesn’t catch my attention, I won’t keep reading. I might stick it out a little longer if I feel the query and synopsis are worth it, but I probably won’t. If the first page is full of spelling and grammatical errors, I’ve seen enough. If you’re not serious enough about your submission to take the time to make sure it’s edited and polished, you’re not serious enough to be writing professionally.

If I make it to the end of the first page and I want to keep going, I’m hooked, or at least curious and willing to give the benefit of the doubt and see where things go. Your characters are intriguing, they’re in some sort of conflict that’s created questions I want to learn the answers to, your world is interesting…usually at least one of the above. I like your writing style, and I want to see more. I’m looking for vocabulary, a sense of your world and your characters, and engaging prose. I want to be drawn in. At the same time, I’m paying attention to how much line editing the manuscript might need later.

The second chapter often starts in a completely new place, and I like to see if the momentum that started in the first chapter was a fluke, or if it will carry through. Two or three chapters are often more than enough to know whether I want to see more. Even when I’m not sure on the first page, I’m pretty confident within ten or fifteen.

The difference between receiving a partial vs a full manuscript isn’t a matter of file storage space, or even a matter of how much I plan to read. It’s a matter of degrees, and it revolves around publishers’ universal dislike of simultaneous submission. It’s okay to send queries and synopses to multiple publishers, but when it comes to sending out actual bits of your manuscript, policy may vary.

Some houses treat partials as manuscripts and won’t allow simultaneous submission of partials. Other houses treat partials as samples; they’re fine with you having a few partials out, as long as you’re open about it. It might even motivate them to work faster, because they know that there are other interested parties. It’s polite to let other publishers know if you have partials out at various places, so that they can respond to you in line with their own policies.

A full manuscript is different. It’s something special. A request for a full manuscript says “We think we might be interested.” And while it might be a nice ego-boost to get publishers into a bidding war over your manuscript, keep in mind that publishers get SWAMPED with submissions, and they don’t like chasing down a lead and getting close to making you an offer, only to learn that you’ve just sold your manuscript somewhere else. Even Dragon Moon, which is officially closed to unsolicited submissions, still gets swamped with submissions.

Simultaneous submissions are great for the author, since they beat the frustration of having to wait while someone makes up his mind before you can send your manuscript somewhere else. But they’re lousy for the publisher for the same reason. The debate on the matter is a long and angry one, and you need only type “simultaneous submissions” into the search engine of your choice to get a good sampling of both sides of the argument and see a lot of good points raised.

I’m not going to go into it too deeply here, since whether it’s a good thing or not is tangental to the point. To answer the question, requesting a partial has very little to do with file size or storage space. It’s about level of interest and level of commitment, and editors/publishers/agents not wanting to tie up a manuscript that they might not be interested in.

With that in mind, I don’t see partial submissions going away.

Tagged as: getting published, publishing, submissions