Christian Literary Agents Manuscript
How To Get A Book Deal – Without Being Scammed.
By Dee Power
How to get a book deal without being scammed is a hurdle for any writers. Publishers Are Not Exempt From Questionable Practices.
Keep These Warning Signs in Mind
Charges a fee to read your manuscript.
You are providing the product for them to sell. Why should you have to pay to see if they are interested in your work?
Offers subsidy contracts
(you pay them to have your book published) when they promote themselves as commercial publishers. Are POD (publish-on-demand) publishers, such as authorshouse, IUniverse, and Xlibris, legitimate publishers? Yes as long as the author realizes the costs and the limitations of POD publishing. Publish On Demand books are rarely stocked in bookstores.
Bait and Switch
There are some publishers who hide behind the mask of respectability and call themselves ‘traditional’ when in fact they are a vanity press. How can you tell? Look at their websites, if the focus is on recruiting writers rather than promoting the books they publish, it’s a huge red flag.
Other publishers ‘will accept’ your manuscript and then come back a few weeks later and say that their list for the next season is full but they would dearly love to publish your book. You just need to share the risk with them by giving them some money.
A new twist is to tell the author that their project has merit but the author will have to find an investor to sponsor their title. The publisher isn’t asking the author directly for any funds but many authors shell out the necessary dollars rather than try and find an ‘investor.’
Rebates
The publisher says that any fees you pay them will be completely refunded once your book reaches a certain sales level, usually in the thousands. Or that they will provide a comparable number of ‘free’ copies when the magic sales level has been reached.
A twist on rebates is that the publisher will match your monetary contribution in marketing efforts for your title. Publishers are supposed to market their own titles. The match most likely will not be in advertising dollars, review copies sent, or book tour expenses but the efforts of the in house staff. Efforts that probably won’t be focused specifically on your title.
How to get a book deal without getting scammed is possible for any author. Just keep these warning signs in mind.
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Blech, don’t submit to Focus on the Family- at least, not if you want anyone to respect your writing. I mean, these are the people who went around saying that Spongebob Squarepants promoted the “homosexual agenda.”
To my knowledge, many of the largest publishing houses have smaller offshoots that specialize in different areas, including Christian fiction. I’d contact the major publishing houses and see what they have.
Does anyone know any literary agents/publishers intrested in christian fiction manuscripts?
UK based writer with several manuscripts also looking for publishers intested in short stories,inspirational poetry. Anyone read – Purple hibiscus by Chiamanda Adiche or Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe- anyone know of any publishers looking for a new African voice out there?
Hi there,
It seems to me that this is a reliable, trustworthy way of attracting agents. I don’t know how effective it is as the only means of attracting attention, though.
Cheers
S
How effective is ChristianManuscriptSubmissions.com? Christian Manuscript Submissions?
Does anyone have any personal experience or inside knowledge of the effectiveness of the online Christian Manuscript Submissions website to attract attention of publishers and literary agents (for my non-fiction sports book).