If you're considering submitting your manuscript to Swoon Reads, Katie shares her tips below.
● The Swoon Reads team is looking for young adult and new adult romance. Research them to see if they're the right fit, just like you would with any publisher, and check out their FAQ.
● There's a lot of manuscripts on the site. Make sure yours is as ready as possible and that you've carefully edited your pitch and short description – these are your best way of attracting readers already on the site. Also, take time to think about cover design and check out the covers of popular works on the site. Not fair, maybe, but we all know the one about judging a book by its cover...
● If you post your manuscript and delete it or replace it, you lose your ratings. So as soon as you post, I recommend clicking through your work on the e-reader to make sure it's properly uploaded. That way you can repost it if needed before you've gotten any ratings. Mine had a few formatting issues that I wished I'd changed while I still could.
● Enlist a couple writer friends who are familiar with your work to write comments, both to ease the “what did I just do” factor and help attract more readers to your manuscript.
● Remember that unlike the slush pile, you can remove your work and repost. Gotten a few comments that you really should change such and such as well as less than five heart ratings? Revise and resubmit – this is ALWAYS an open invitation at Swoon, you don't need an editorial letter first.
● Give a little thought to your publicity plans. Been dragging your feet on an author web site? Not sure about the best use of Twitter/Facebook/Tumblr/Pinterest? Now's a good time for those thoughts.
● Remember that the highest ranked manuscript isn't necessarily the winner. Swoon is looking for writers, not homecoming queens.
Katie Van Ark's YA novel, The Boy Next Door (formerly titled Pairing Up), will be a February 2015 release from Macmillan's Swoon Reads imprint. Visit her online at www.katievanark.com and follow her on Twitter @kvanark.
For more writing tips, the Swoon Reads blog has a Tips Tuesday feature: http://www.swoonreads.com/blog/tips-tuesday-writing-advice-from-swoon-readers.
And tonight at 9 pm EST, Katie and other Swoon Reads first listers will be doing a #SwoonReads twitter chat.
If you've submitted your story to Swoon Reads, let us know in the comments so we can check it out!
Best of luck!
Kristin Lenz
2 comments:
Not submitting right now. But thanks for the tips.
ONLINE FORM, RESULT download
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