There is a particular kind of hope in pressing send on a submission. You have spent months, maybe years, on the manuscript; now it rests on a form, an attachment and a subject line. At small presses, most rejections are not decided by the prose. They are decided by a file that would not open, a sample that ignored the guidelines, or a follow-up sent eight days after the press promised a reply within twelve weeks. The checklist below covers the dull, administrative side of submitting. It is also the side you control.
None of it will make a weak manuscript strong. All of it will keep a strong manuscript from being turned down for reasons that have nothing to do with the writing — which, at a press reading four hundred submissions a year with two unpaid editors, is a surprisingly large share of the rejections.
Read the guidelines twice
Indie presses are not interchangeable, and their submission pages are not decorative. One will want the first three chapters and a one-page synopsis; the next will want a single sample page and a fifty-word bio; a third will want the full manuscript pasted into the body of an email because their system strips attachments. A fourth has been closed to submissions since March and says so in bold at the top of the page.
Read the guidelines once for what is asked, then read them again for what is forbidden. The second pass is where you discover that they do not accept simultaneous submissions, that they only read between September and November, that "we love speculative fiction" is followed three lines later by "no novels over 90,000 words."
Please send the first 5,000 words as a .docx attachment. We do not open .pdf files and cannot follow Google Docs links. Simultaneous submissions are fine; please tell us if another press offers first.
Every clause in that paragraph is a rule someone broke last week. Treat each one as a small door that opens only if you turn the handle the right way.
Files: send what they asked for, not what you prefer
Format disputes are the quietest form of rejection. If the guidelines say .docx, do not send a .pages file on the theory that they can convert it; on some systems they cannot, and on others they will not bother. If they ask for a .pdf, export it rather than printing and scanning it, and check that the fonts embedded properly. If they ask for text in the body of an email, resist the urge to attach it anyway "just in case."
Naming your files
A file called Final FINAL draft v3 (Julia's edits).docx tells an editor that you have not yet decided what your book is. Name files plainly:
- Sample_Surname_WorkingTitle.docx
- Synopsis_Surname_WorkingTitle.pdf
- FullManuscript_Surname_WorkingTitle.docx
Match the spelling of the title in your file names to the one in your cover letter, your synopsis and your email subject line. Consistency is not fussiness; it is the cheapest evidence of professionalism you can offer.
Formatting the sample
Most presses that ask for a sample want what the industry calls standard manuscript format: double-spaced, 12-point serif type, one-inch margins, left-aligned text, no justification, no hyphenation. Paragraph indents rather than blank lines between paragraphs. A header on every page with your surname, the title and the page number. Scene breaks marked with a centred hash or three asterisks, never a stray blank line that the editor will read as a typo.
Two practical notes. First, if you write in .docx, use styles rather than tabs and manual spacing; converting a document built on tabs is the fastest way to produce a dozen accidental errors. Second, if the press asks for something specific — 1.5 spacing, Times New Roman, no header — follow that, not the general rule. Their guidelines outrank any blog post, including this one.
Formatting mistakes that get noticed
- Tracked changes left on, so the editor reads your revisions as commentary.
- Comments and marginal notes still in the file, sometimes about the press itself.
- Chapter headings in a display font that does not exist on the reader's machine and substitutes badly.
- A file that begins on the title page with no name, no word count and no contact address.
The cover letter, the bio and the synopsis
Keep the cover letter to a page. Say what you are sending, why this press in particular, and one or two sentences about the book. If you have a publication credit, mention it once. If you do not, do not apologise for it. Editors at small presses are not looking for credentials; they are looking for a reason to keep reading, and a cover letter that spends four paragraphs explaining that you have never published anything gives them a reason to stop.
The bio is shorter than you think: two or three sentences telling them where you live, what you do, and what you have written. The synopsis is the opposite discipline — plot, in order, including the ending. If your synopsis trails off into "and then something unexpected happens," the editor will assume the manuscript does the same.
Follow-up etiquette
The general rule is simple: wait as long as they said, then wait a little longer. If the guidelines promise a reply within twelve weeks, do not nudge on day eighty-five. If they give no timeline, six months is a reasonable moment to check in. If they say plainly that they only respond to submissions they are interested in, then silence is the answer you were given, and writing to ask for confirmation will not improve your file.
When you do nudge, keep it under eighty words
Dear [Name], I submitted [Title] on [date]. Your guidelines mention a response within twelve weeks. I wanted to check that the file arrived and is still under consideration. Thank you for your time.
That is the whole email. No second paragraph, no apology, no summary of the plot, no "I know you're busy." Send it once. If there is no reply to the nudge, the nudge itself becomes the answer.
When the answer is no
Not every rejection needs a reply, but one that follows a full-manuscript request usually deserves a sentence of thanks and nothing more. Do not ask why, unless the press invited it; do not offer to revise; do not mention the other press that is "very interested." Rejection at a small press is often a matter of a list that is full rather than a judgement on your book, and the editor who passes today is the same editor you might submit to in three years. Leave the door unlocked.
A pre-send checklist
- Guidelines read twice, and the submission window confirmed as open.
- File format, spacing, font and word count match what was asked.
- Files named plainly and consistently.
- No tracked changes, comments or leftover author notes.
- Cover letter under a page, synopsis complete to the final page.
- Contact details correct in the document itself, not only in the email.
- Submission sent from an address you actually check, with the title spelled the same everywhere.
- A note in your calendar for the follow-up date, set to the day after the timeline they gave.
The part you control
The writing is the hard part, and it is also the part no checklist can fix. Everything else — the file, the format, the timing, the tone of a short email — takes an afternoon to get right and quietly decides whether your manuscript reaches the person who was going to love it. Get the dull things right. Then go back to the work that brought you here, and start the next one while you wait.
Photo: RDNE Stock project / Pexels
