On Submissions and What I'm Looking For
Please note: Due to a deeply unfortunate backlog, as of May 1, 2010, I am closed to unsolicited submissions until further notice, except in the cases of conference attendees submitting under the terms established at that conference, and writers with whom I've previously corresponded and invited to send future manuscripts. (Agented submissions are also welcome, of course.) When I reopen to submissions, the news will be posted on my blog as well as here.
Arthur, at Arthur A. Levine Books, is still very much open to submissions, and you can visit his submissions page here for further discussion of queries and what our imprint is all about.
What is your submission policy?
After long thought and much perplexity over this very subject, I'd like to see the following in a submission:
Picture books: Query letter + full text
Novels: Query letter + two chapters + synopsis (in that order)
Other: Query letter + five-page sample of writing (five poems, five pages of nonfiction, etc.)
Novels: Query letter + two chapters + synopsis (in that order)
Other: Query letter + five-page sample of writing (five poems, five pages of nonfiction, etc.)
Any formatting guidelines?
Letters
and synopses can be single-spaced, but manuscripts should be
double-spaced. Please include a self-addressed stamped envelope for my
reply (of a size, and with postage, sufficient to contain your
manuscript if you'd like it returned; otherwise the manuscript will be
recycled). Please note: A submission without an SASE will not receive a reply.
Someone
once told me that she'd heard all submissions should be set in Courier
Text, as Courier is a fixed-width font and that allowed editors to see
how long the final book would be. This is not true and will likely
result in a considerable waste of paper, as well as your manuscript
looking huge. Any nice readable font with a serif is fine.
Why do I have to send a query
letter as well as the full text of my picture-book manuscript/synopsis of my novel?
Because the query letter lets me get a sense of how you talk and think about your book, while the
manuscript lets me see the book for myself.
What are you looking for?
I answer this question at length in "Finding a Publisher and Falling in Love," so I encourage you to read that if you haven't already. You should also look at the Arthur A. Levine Books website and the list of books I've edited to see if your book might suit my overall list. After that . . .
Arthur
A. Levine Books publishes a wide range of hardcover books for children
and young adults, including picture books, middle-grade and YA novels,
and select nonfiction. We do not do a lot of easy readers, because
those tend to be more successful as paperbacks; nor do we publish many
novelty books or books for the very young, because those usually
belong in Scholastic's Cartwheel imprint. But we have
published in all of those formats with authors or illustrators who
wanted to explore new territory, so we aren't averse to them -- they're
just not the usual Arthur A. Levine Book.
In "Finding a Publisher" I say I'm looking for three things:
- Emotional truth
- Good writing
- Originality
To
that list I'm going to add "Really great characters," because I will
follow a character I love just about anywhere -- into deep space,
across the Gobi desert, inside the boys' locker room -- just for the
pleasure of hanging out with him or her. Millicent Min, Cedar B.
Hartley, Calwyn, Thomas (from The Book of Everything), Harry,
Ron, and Hermione, Stanford Wong, Charlotte Miller, Marcelo Sandoval .
. . Their creators are my heroes.
Genre-wise, I like fantasies, I like mysteries, I like romance, I like thrillers -- but they have to be literary
fantasies/mysteries/romance/thrillers, and really driven by their
characters rather than the familiar conventions of the genre. I love
genre books with a twist: the fantasy that begins as a romance,
the mystery told entirely through letters. Jaclyn Moriarty's The Year of Secret Assignments is a great example of genre-twisting, character-driven chick
lit.
I like books about characters who do things,
who take action in their own lives, who love and lie and take risks and
fight to get what they want, who are faced with and make difficult
choices.
I'm very interested in projects from writers and illustrators of color,
the better to reflect our whole range of human experience. If you'd like to read more about this, click here.
I
also like historical fiction, especially about times, places, and
people not often covered in historical fiction: the Dark Ages, for
example, or non-Western settings (China, Brazil, the Congo), or
medieval female protagonists who aren't averse to doing embroidery and
getting married (because when was the last time you saw a
historical-fiction heroine who wasn't preternaturally spunky?). But I'm happy with a traditional Civil War/Renaissance England/whatever novel
with a peppy heroine too.
I'd
love to see more school stories and sports books. I'm the child of two
former teachers, so my life from the age of four to twenty-one pretty
much revolved around school, and I played soccer, t-ball, volleyball,
and basketball growing up (all badly, I cheerfully admit), but oddly I
don't see a lot of submissions on these common childhood/teenage
experiences.
I'm interested in books that involve religion and religious questions (and including both Eastern and Western religions),
although I'm not
interested in books that exist solely to espouse a particular religious
viewpoint. In other words, the religious aspect ought to be driven by
the character's journey, not the other way around.
I'd
like to work on more nonfiction, of a narrative or descriptive
stripe rather than a reference or prescriptive type. I'm not at all a
science person, but I love the science articles in "The New Yorker"
because they teach me how rich and strange our world is, and that's
what I think all good nonfiction should do, whether it's science
or economics or history or biography.
And anyone who can identify the exact source of "After long thought and much perplexity" above without Googling
it should definitely send me their work.
What does "literary" mean?
It
means that the manuscript explores a situation in some depth, whether
it's emotional depth (you're going deep into this character's pain) or
philosophical depth (your book is really about the meaning of life) or
factual depth (by the end of your book I will be absolutely fascinated by sea slugs). Literary fiction delves rather than skimming or describing the surface. But it does have to be written well too: showing, not
telling, all that.
Some
people think that literary fiction doesn't have action to it -- that
literary fiction is people sitting around and feeling and talking at
each other. This is not true. But in literary fiction, the writer is as
interested in the characters' emotional development as he or she is in
the action the novel portrays, and particularly in the relationship
between the two, even if that relationship isn't spelled out in so many
words.
What about illustration samples or portfolios?
Illustration
samples are always welcome. If I like your style and it seems like a
good fit for our list, I will keep the sample on file; if your style
doesn't seem right for me, I'm going to recycle the sample. (Sorry.) I
am happy to do portfolio reviews as time and taste permit, and I've
written a little bit about what I like to see in an illustrator's
portfolio here.
Can I submit more than one manuscript at a time?
No.
Nor should you submit the same manuscript to me and to Arthur, either
simultaneously or consecutively. (Nor should you submit different manuscripts
to us simultaneously. . . . In general, it's probably wise to pick one
or the other of us to submit to, and stick with that.)
Can I submit to you more than once?
Yes, although I must say that if you've queried me three times or more and never yet received even a handwritten
note, then you might want to try another editor.
What do you not like?