Writing a book is a long, drawn out process that takes longer than you may think. Writing a good piece is only half the battle. The other is getting your manuscript picked up by a good publishing house, which isn’t as easy as you may think. However, no matter what kind of book you are wanting to publish, one good tip to keep in mind is be unique. Readers get tired of reading the same old thing, over and over. To get your manuscript picked up by a successful publishing house, you need to come up with a fresh idea that the general public will enjoy reading. Uniqueness is what has made so many writers today successful.

The first step you need to take if you want to get your manuscript published is write a good manuscript. Once you have finished your first revision of it, see if anybody in your family wants to read it over and edit it for you. If nobody does, try asking some of your close friends or other people you know with a keen eye for grammatical errors. To get the best results, you should have more than one person editing it at a time. This way, you can compile their suggestions together for your second revision of the manuscript.

After you have made sure your manuscript is free of any and all grammatical errors, it is time to look for a publisher. When you are looking for publishers, pay close attention to what each publisher’s main genre is. You don’t want to look foolish for sending a romance novel to a publishing house who mainly publishes technical writing.

Now you need to make sure that you tailor the formatting of your manuscript to fit the format required by the certain publishing house you chose. There should be specific guidelines for the publishing house you chose on their website. The most common format for manuscripts includes one inch margins, a cover page, and the entire work to be double spaced. It is very important that you follow the publishing house’s requirements because otherwise there is a good chance that they will not even read your manuscript.

One of the most beneficial things you can do before you actually submit your manuscript to a publishing house is have it professionally edited by some one. The only reason that many writers do not do this is because it is so expensive. Many professional editors will charge up to ten dollars a page to edit. If you have have a five hundred page manuscript, this would cost five thousand dollars. This step is well worth the money though, because the professional editor will be able to give you insight on what the actual publishing house might think about your manuscript. This is the last time you will be able to edit your manuscript before you submit it to the publishing house. Do not feel bad about enlisting the services of a professional editor, even the most skilled writers need somebody else with experience in the writing to look at their manuscript. People who spend the extra money hiring a professional editor will have a much better chance of getting their manuscript accepted by a publishing house.

So now that you have done all the steps outline above, you probably think that you are ready to send you manuscript in to the publishing house of your choice right? Before you do this, there is one more very important step you need to take. This is called a query. What a query does is describe your manuscript. It allows the publishing house editor that will be reviewing your book to realize how you are different from other writers submitting their book. In this letter, talk about how your manuscript is unique, why readers would like it, and why you are qualified to write the book. This is your first opportunity to grasp the publishing house editor’s attention, which is why you should spend a lot of time making sure this one to two page letter is well written and shows the editor all the positive assets that you have.

Now that you have written a carefully thought out query, it is finally time to send in your manuscript to the publishing house you have chosen. Many publishing houses these days accept electronic submissions, but it is best to make sure. Also see if they require a specific format for you to send your manuscript in. Can you use Microsoft Word or does it have to be sent in PDF format? These are important questions you will need to find the answers to. If you send your manuscript in via the Internet, make sure that you supply the publishing house with your full name, your address, your telephone number, and the email address you want them to contact you at. The same things apply if you send your manuscript in via the mail.

Now that you know what steps you need to take in order to get your manuscript published, you might have to make some revisions in your plan. It is important to remember that getting your book published does not happen right away; it takes hard work, patient, and diligence to get your manuscript published. Even if the first publishing house you send your manuscript to does not end up accepting it, always try to look at the bright side. Maybe that publishing house didn’t have as good of a revenue sharing system as you would have hoped for. In the end, your goal is to write a story that is profitable and one that people love reading. When creating a manuscript, it is important to make your story as applicable to as many people as possible. This in turn will generate more press about your book, which will result in more sales. Once you have successfully published your first book, if you decide to publish another one, the process will be much easier. You will have already experienced the process and will be an old pro.