Eight Hard Truths about Agents and Two Suggestions

I’ve been privy to some recent conversations regarding agents and the querying process and thought it would be a good time to put together a post that addresses some misperceptions I see fairly frequently.

Having spent time reading and editing submissions for a literary agent (two-and-a-half years and 1,200+ submissions) as well as being a writer myself, I’ve developed a pretty good understanding of what happens on both sides of this equation. One of the reasons I became a submissions (or slush pile) reader in the first place was so I could gain a better perspective on what agents actually see from querying writers as well as have insight on my competition for an agent’s attention.

 

So here are eight hard truths about agents, querying, and what really goes on after you hit send.

 

1.     The slush pile is an agent’s LOWEST priority.

This is a basic truth I consistently see writers ignore or of which they are completely unaware. An agent’s highest priority—and the thing that takes up most of their time—is representing the work of their existing clients, and their to do list reflects that. Prepping manuscripts to go out on submission, networking with editors, conferring with clients on existing contracts and the issues that arise during the publishing process, reading and editing manuscripts, managing the submission process and client commitments…the list is endless, but all of it is what pays the bills for an agent.

The slush pile, on the other hand, represents the greatest amount of work with the least amount of return. It’s time consuming and never ending. Agents are not kidding when they talk about their inboxes – they’re jam packed with queries. That’s especially true right now because so many people have had a LOT of extra time to write. Most agents have seen a significant spike in the number of queries they receive.

 

Which leads me to the next hard truth…

 2.     The slush pile odds are astronomical—like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.

This is a hard truth for both agents and writers. In the two-and-a-half years I read submissions for the literary agent, I probably recommended she read about 5% of the 1,200 queries (the agency’s guidelines requested a query letter, synopsis, and the first fifty manuscript pages). That’s roughly 60 queries. Out of that number, she requested full manuscripts from maybe a dozen, and out of that, she only offered representation to ONE author.

Before you think I was cutting some worthy contenders out of the running, let me add, as a writer, my bias was ALWAYS to give the manuscript the benefit of the doubt. I usually read more pages than most agents would and gave the agent recommendations about what was working and what wasn’t if the first fifty pages seemed promising. She used my edit notes a number of times to give feedback to writers on requested manuscripts or queries that showed promise but weren’t quite right for her. So a 5% read recommendation rate is actually generous, and leads me to the next truth about the slush pile.

 3.     The vast majority of the manuscripts being queried aren’t ready.

I know. Believe me, I really do know. After working on a manuscript for years, especially as you get close to the end and feel as if you will rip your eyes out if you have to read it one more time, you want to believe it’s finished and ready to go. But the very, very hard truth of the slush pile is that at least 80% of what I read was simply not ready to be queried. Most of this number was made up of manuscripts that were exceptionally raw and unpolished. As harsh as this sounds, writing is one of those activities that people often think they can do without practice or study. No one thinks they can play pro sports the first time they try to play the game, and yet they apply a different metric to writing without recognizing that publication by a traditional publishing house is very much like playing in the major leagues.

 Of the remaining 20% of the queries, I recommended the agent read roughly 5%, as I said before. That 15% in between were the ones that almost made it, but needed another round of revision to be truly polished and fully realized (see my posts on revision if you want more of my thoughts on what a fully-realized novel looks like) or needed more editing than an agent can provide.

 

Which brings me to hard truth number four.

 4.     An agent’s job is to sell a manuscript—they’re not your critique partner or editor and don’t owe you feedback.

Yes, agents provide feedback or work with clients to edit and refine their manuscript prior to sending it out on submission, but it’s not their job to provide that kind of feedback for your query letter or pages. Sometimes, they simply can’t give you a solid reason for passing other than the manuscript isn’t right for them, and the sheer volume of queries (remember, the slush pile is the lowest priority and has the least amount of return for the time it takes to complete the task) means that they often don’t have the time to spend thinking about it too hard. I can honestly say, I sometimes spent more time coming up with reasons I was recommending the agent pass than I did reading the manuscript because, while it was obvious within a page it wasn’t what the agent could sell, it took time to articulate why.

 An agent’s job is to sell publication rights to publishers (they don’t actually sell the manuscript, they actually sell the rights to publish the manuscript under specified criteria). If you want feedback, find a writing group, find critique partners and beta readers, hire a developmental editor. If an agent does give you real, specific, concrete and actionable feedback, rejoice! that means you’re on the right track.

 5.     Yes! Agents really do read queries that fast.

This is probably one of the most disheartening, frustrating hard truths about agents. They really can assess your query and pages that quickly, and no, they’re not being lazy.

 Agents know what they can and can’t sell and will only read to the point where they know they can’t sell something. Sometimes that happens in the opening line of the query (why it’s important to know your genres and subgenres), sometimes it’s on the first manuscript page. I personally know one agent who draws a line in the margin every time something ticks his “not for me” meter. Three lines, and he’s done. It doesn’t matter if he’s on the tenth page, the first, or even in the first paragraph. Three ticks, and he passes. This same agent often responds within an hour of receiving a query. And we’ve all received insta-rejects that make us wonder if our email even got opened. Doesn't mean they didn't, it just means that you probably targeted an agent who can't sell what you wrote.

Which also doesn't mean there's something wrong with your book. Agents do miss out on terrific manuscripts because of the sheer volume of work they're trying to get through, or because the writer revised after they queried a certain number of agents, or because the agent simply doesn't know the right editor to show the work to. There are lots of reasons agents pass on work that went on to have incredible critical and financial success. Every agent has a story about the bestseller that got away because they didn’t recognize the potential or they were too slow responding or they didn't have the right editorial contacts to make the sale. 

 

But the truth is, agents do not use AI to scan for keywords like companies do with resumes; they do not throw darts at queries to decide which ones they’ll read; they do not do any of the hundred things I’ve heard writers complain must be happening to their queries. What they do do is read until they know they can’t sell the project, reject it, and move on to the next query.

6.     This is true even if an agent has requested a full or partial manuscript.

I’m setting this hard truth on it’s own because I often hear writers complain about how quickly a requested full or partial garnered a rejection. “There’s no way they read the entire book!” You’re right. They might not have read the entire thing because they are only reading until the point they know they can’t sell it. And, yes, it’s frustrating when they give you feedback that makes it clear they didn’t read the whole thing, but what that feedback tells you (if you hear it a couple of times) is something is missing from the beginning of your book.

 7.     Your query letter does not sell your manuscript.

I’m probably going to get push back on this one, but…No matter what an agent or other writers tell you, your query letter does not get an agent to sign you. The only thing that gets an agent to offer representation is having a project they believe they can sell, and that means having a solid manuscript, with a dynamic premise, that hits the publishing marketplace at the right time (I often tell my clients, if Jane Austen were a debut writer in 2021 and submitted Pride and Prejudice as it was written in 1813, she’d most likely garner a slew of rejections for the simple reason that the contemporary marketplace has different demands for a 21^st century manuscript).

A query letter has two jobs:

• ·       Succinctly present your book’s premise and its central conflict/problem in a dynamic way that catches the agent’s attention.
• ·       NOT give the agent reasons to reject before they read your pages.

Q   Query letters often act as a red flag to agents for the problems they’re going to encounter in the manuscript. Long query/long manuscript usually means the book needs extensive editing or the premise isn’t fully developed. Vague summary of the book can mean that the writer hasn’t figured out what the story is really about yet. A query heavy on the set up probably means the story doesn’t really get going until after fifty to a hundred pages.

The query letter often acts as a mirror for the manuscript (which is why it is a valuable exercise to write a good query letter). After reading those 1,200+ queries, I can tell you I NEVER saw a fantastic query letter paired with a mediocre manuscript. I saw lots of so-so queries and so-so pages. I also saw so-so letters with really good pages.

 

In 1,200+ query letters, almost every single one of them was an indication of what I would find in the pages. What this means is that I read the pages with the idea that I was looking for reasons to recommend the agent pass. If the query was good and solid, the book generally was too.

 

I might do an entire blog post on this topic, but for right now, I’ll say the reason I think the query letter has become so dominant in conversations (both from writers and agents) is that it is something agents can give feedback on quickly and easily. “Query letters that worked” is a really popular topic in interviews and workshop sessions with agents. Invariably, though, what I see in the query letters most often chosen by agents to discuss as "effective" wasn’t so much the letter that made the agent request the manuscript. Often it was the referral from an existing client or someone in the publishing industry, the writer’s extensive platform or special expertise, or a prestigious award or fellowship the writer had received that would have tipped the balance even if the query were written in crayon on a napkin.

 

Last hard truth…

 8.     You do not have a relationship with an agent simply because you queried them or they requested your manuscript.

I frequently see writers act as if an agent owes them something because the writer has queried or received a full request, and I do understand the temptation. Writers invest a lot of time and energy into developing a list of agents to query. We research them, stalk them a little bit on social media, read their clients’ work, and develop specific and realistic reasons for querying a particular agent. We become invested in thinking that a particular agent is THE ONE, and it sometimes feels as if we know them. When the agent doesn’t reciprocate, writers sometimes feel frustrated even though the agent is just doing their job. Even a revise and resubmit doesn’t mean you have a relationship, it just means you’ve got plans to go on a second date.

The point at which you have a relationship with an agent is when they sign you. Up until that point, don’t take anything personally. And, yes, I know exactly how difficult that is.

 

And now the two suggestions about how to increase your slush pile odds:

 1.     Write the best manuscript you can. Edit. Revise and rewrite. Give it to beta readers and critique partners and ask them, specifically, to tell you places where they wanted to put the manuscript down. They don’ t need to tell you why (if they can, great), but the idea is to get an idea of where an agent will do the same.

 2.     Know your genre and the genres an agent represents. Just because someone is an agent, doesn’t mean they represent any old kind of book. They specialize, sometimes only representing subgenres of a particular genre so that, even if romance is a category the represent, they may specialize in Regency era romance. This is why, to the best of your ability, do your research and look at the specific types of books an agent has sold.

 3.     (a bonus suggestion): Follow an agent’s submission guidelines to the best of your ability. Every agent or agency has their own guidelines. Follow them. Exactly as they are written. Want to play in the major leagues? This is the first step in demonstrating that you are a professional.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is It Done Yet? - Part 1

This is the first in a series of posts I’m doing based on a presentation I made at the Las Vegas Writers Conference in May of this year focused on how to know when your manuscript is ready to query. 

Part 1 – The Goal: A Fully-Realized Novel

Knowing when your manuscript is ready is a topic that comes up quite regularly in many writers’ groups both online and off. Most of the time, the usual advice gets offered: it’s done when you can’t stand working on it anymore; it’s done when all you can revise is punctuation; it’s done when you think it is; it’s done when your beta readers tell you it is; it’s done when you’ve done x number of revisions; it’s done when you don’t know what else to do with it.

All of these responses miss the mark because the question being asked is: when is my novel ready to query? Underneath that question is the real one: how do I know my novel will attract interest from an agent?

My answer, based on my work as a developmental/ content editor, and several years reading and editing submissions for a literary agent, is a bit more complex and based on both the writer’s understanding of their work and the demands of the publishing marketplace.

Reading for the literary agent taught me a lot. Mostly, it taught me that the vast majority of manuscripts being queried weren’t ready yet. They needed at least another revision to become what I call a fully realized novel.

A fully realized novel is one in which all the novel’s elements work together to create the dynamic forward movement that propels the characters (and the reader) from the first word to the last in a satisfying and unified manner. There is a clear and well-defined premise or central question that organizes the plot, characters, theme, setting, relevant details, structure, information flow, and sequence of scenes. In a fully realized novel, everything that is on the page is relevant and necessary to create the overall effect of the work. The overall effect of the novel is vastly greater than the sum of the individual parts. 

A movie I think does a near-perfect job demonstrating what fully realized storytelling looks like (and I’m using a movie here because they create a complete story arc in roughly two hours) is EverAfter, the Drew Barrymore and Angelica Houston retelling of Cinderella.

What I love about this movie is that nearly everything, from the costuming to set design to dialogue has an arc with a purpose and a payoff.

For example, the line, “You have been born to wealth and privilege and with that comes specific obligations” is spoken three times. First by the Queen of France and then Danielle (the Cinderella character) to Prince Henry, and lastly by the Prince himself. Each time, the line changes in meaning and it effectively shows Henry’s growth from the errant prince attempting to shirk his responsibilities, to realizing the opportunities his position might afford for helping others, to a belligerent response after Danielle’s identity as a commoner is revealed at the ball and embarrasses the prince in front of his subjects and father (in response to which, Leonardo DaVinci, this movie’s fairy godmother, says, “Hogwash” and tells the prince to get over himself; if that's truly what he believes, he doesn't deserve Danielle).

Similarly, a distinctive ruby and pearl necklace provides a subtle detail that has significant payoff. One of the royal pages took the necklace from the queen’s bedroom and gives it to the stepmother so that a meeting can be engineered for the older daughter, Marguerite, and the queen. After church, Marguerite “returns” the necklace to the queen saying it must have fallen off while she was inside. The queen rewards Marguerite’s honesty by inviting mother and daughter to the palace for a chat. At the end of the movie, when Danielle is presented to her family as the prince’s wife, she’s wearing that necklace. No mention is made of it, but the arc of that small detail is clear. In addition, there’s an earlier scene in which the baroness is buying a broach with the intention that Marguerite wear it to attract the prince’s attention. She keeps telling the seller that it needs to be bigger, to which he says, “I fear if it were any larger, she might tip over.” These are two instances where the details that are called specifically to the viewer’s attention have significance and meaning.

A fully realized novel provides the same sense of purpose, arc, and payoff for all its elements. Every scene carries a sense of the underlying premise or question, every detail relates to it, every plot point builds toward the payoff. 

A great test for whether the novel is fully realized is how easily you can write your query letter or create an elevator pitch for your novel. I think many writers struggle with their queries because their stories haven’t coalesced around a central focus that drives the narrative forward, and this is mainly a result of not pushing past the initial stages of revision to the place where the story, that connective tissue that creates relevance and unifies the narrative, emerges and becomes clear.

In Part 2, I talk about knowing your genre as an important first step in the revision process. 

If you’d like to receive a copy of my revision flow chart, please contact me at: diane.glaz@gmail.com

If you'd like more information about my editing services, please visit my website or contact me through email, Facebook, Twitter, or IG. I specialize in literary, upmarket, commercial, YA, contemporary women's, erotica, and fantasy, and have a diverse and international client base whose work has appeared on the NY Times best seller lists and Amazon top seller lists.

Twitter: @DeeGeeWriter

IG: diane.glaz

(If you follow me on IG, be forewarned: you'll see a lot of pictures of my Airedales and whisky)

Here are the links for the all the parts of this series: 

Part 1: The goal of a fully-realized novel

Part 2: Know your genre

Part 3: What the writer needs - Telling yourself the story

Part 4: What the story needs - Telling the story

Part 5: What the story (also) needs - Telling the real story

Part 6: Destabilizing and inciting incidents

Part 7: What the reader needs

How to Find an Agent

I was on a panel discussion for a creative writing class last week to talk about agents. I was there to offer the insights I've gained on the whole querying process from both my personal experience as a writer and being on the agent side of things as a slush pile reader. The other two panelists were agents.

We quickly turned to the question of how writers search for an agent. One of the agents took the lead and gave the standard advice: look at the acknowledgement section of books you like or books that are similar to what you're writing, find out the name of the agent who represents this writer, go to the agent's web site, look up the submission guidelines, query the agent.

It was a light bulb moment for me: Agents do not know the most effective ways to search for an agent for the simple reason that they don't HAVE to. That's not their job. Their job is to find writers who have written work they can sell to a publisher. They can give you wonderful advice on how to query agents because they know what they want to see from a writer, but most of them don't know the resources available to writers to help them find the agents to query.

As I said, that's not their job. It's ours.

And I realized, it's time for writers to start sharing advice on how to find an agent. So I'm starting here with a guide to developing a list of agents to query.

1. Identify your genre - this seems like such an obvious thing to know and many writers do, but, judging by the slush pile, this is not always the case. Agents represent specific genres. That's where they have their contacts, the editors with whom they are most successful placing books and with whom they have developed a professional relationship. Even within genres, there may be subcategories within which agents specialize. For example: Within the romance genre, there are very specific subcategories historical, paranormal, wedding, millionaire (or billionaire because of inflation), etc. In mysteries, you find police procedurals, whodunit's, cozy mysteries, amateur sleuth, etc. Memoir, too, has specific sub-genres such as coming of age, travel, sports, etc.

While you might not want to query with such specificity, knowing that these categories exist help you evaluate an agent's ability to successfully represent and sell your work. Many agents have a preference for a specific time period or a type of mystery, and being able to distinguish between mysteries and thrillers may make the difference between an agent offering to represent you and sending you a rejection simply because you queried one while the agent only represents the other.

This is a good resource for figuring out your genre/subgenre: Book Industry Study Group Categories. You can use these categories to find books on Amazon (for example, search for fiction>fantasy>urban) and take a look at books within these categories to make sure you've correctly identified your book's genre.

(This Word Slut post on how to know your novel's genre goes into more detail on this crucial step in the querying process.)

2. Generating a list of names - I find likely agents in a few different spots: Publisher's Marketplace, faculty lists for conferences and workshops, and Twitter #mswl.

My single best resource is Publisher's Marketplace. It's a subscription service ($25/month), but it is definitely worth it if you are a working writer. Alongside the industry news, PM keeps a running list of publishing deals that is searchable for agents, editors, and keywords (like genre). You can search for deals all the way back to 2000, but, for the purpose of generating a list of agents, I only go back 6 months to a year. I usually search for agents who have sold debut fiction first, then widen my search to agents who have sold any fiction.

Why? Because I know these are agents who are selling in the CURRENT publishing market. The biggest problem with looking in the acknowledgement section of published books is you're probably looking at books that sold 5 to 10 years ago. The publishing marketplace was very different then. Even work that's just been released was sold a minimum of a year ago and, depending on what has happened to the economy in the intervening year, the publishing environment (and what sells) can change radically. I am looking for agents who are successful NOW.

You're not going to get much more about a recent sale than a couple of sentences, but I'll come back to these agents with recent sales in a moment.

I also look at faculty lists for conferences and workshops like Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Napa Valley Writers Conference, Kauai, Tin House, etc. (Poets & Writers has a comprehensive list of conferences and workshops). Agents who are attending these conferences are most likely looking for new clients. Actively looking for new clients. In addition, you might find a conference you want to attend and that puts you in the position to network face-to-face with an agent or agents with whom you are interested (which, frankly, is a much more successful way to get an agent to request you manuscript, though the cost of it is infinitely higher than sending out batches of queries via email, so save it for your #1 dream agents).

Twitter #mswl (for 'manuscript wish list') is another place to look for agents who are actively looking for writers. Agents LOVE Twitter and you can find any number of agents to follow. The #mswl is specifically where agents tell writers what they'd like to see right now. "Looking for new adult/steampunk/romance" "would love to see more high-concept commercial spectulative novels with complex characters." Some can be highly specific, "I'd love a novel about Abigail Adams."

You can find other databases of agents at Query Tracker and Agent Query.

And there are a few other resources on my blog post Resources for Querying Writers.

3. Research - you knew this was coming, right? As I assemble my list of agents, I constantly refer to agents' web sites to look at what they say they want and only start to research an agent when I'm reasonably sure I'm at least in the same neighborhood of work as what the agent represents. Then I start Googling. I find as much information as I can about agents either from their own web sites or interviews that they've given to writer blogs, Writer's Digest, Poet's & Writers, any where that I can find some place this agent has spelled out what he or she likes, how to query, what gets them excited about a work, what they can't stand. ANYTHING.

I look at books an agent has repped by reading first pages or chapters on Amazon (incidentally, agents, this is one reason it's really helpful if you break titles out on your agency web site by who repped what). Going back to the deals list on Publisher's Marketplace for a moment. You usually won't be able to read the book that has just sold simply because it hasn't been published yet, so the next best thing is to look at recently released titles repped by the same agent. You might be able to find excerpts of the just-sold book by Googling the author, but you're better off looking at published titles on Amazon. And searching the deals database for a specific agent for several years will give you a list of titles that agent has sold, which will then give you a list to research on Amazon.

4. Query - Only after I've done my research, do I go back to an agent's web site and look at the submission guidelines and then follow them to the letter (see my blog post on Submission Guidelines for why this is important).

One of the benefits of doing this research is that you can give agents that individual reason for why you chose to query them. "I'm querying you because you represented A Wandering Shadow and have an interested in paranormal romance set in the dawn of the Industrial Era" is a heck of a lot stronger than "You represent romance" and places you among the very few querying writers in the slush pile who have done their research and not just sent off batches of query letters.

And telling you how to write a query letter is something agents can do far better than I can.


Want to know if your novel is ready to query? My current series of posts "Is it Done Yet?" based on my presentation at the Las Vegas Writers Conference this past April starts here and takes you through the stages of revision from first draft to query-ready manuscript.


If you'd like more information about me and my editing services, please visit my website or contact me through email or on Facebook, Twitter, or IG. I specialize in literary, upmarket, commercial, YA, contemporary women's, erotica, and fantasy, and have a diverse and international client base who's work has appeared on the NY Times best seller lists and Amazon top seller lists.

Twitter: @DeeGeeWriter 
Instagram: diane.glaz
Email: diane.glaz@gmail.com

Slush Pile Reader -- Let's Talk About Guidelines

Being a slush pile reader is something that's been in the back of my mind for about two years now, so when the opportunity presented itself, I said yes. Agents always tell writers about the pile of unsolicited manuscripts that come in -- the horror stories, the shear volume of it, that 80-90% of it shouldn't be going out in the first place -- so I was curious to experience this for myself and find out what my manuscript was up against when I queried an agent. It's been an eye-opening experience, to say the least, and has given me a lot of insight into the submissions process from the agent's side of things.

I've decided to share those insights here, and I want to start with submission guidelines and manuscript formatting. Now I read fiction submissions, so I'm talking here about novels or short story collections.

Almost every agency or agent has guidelines for submitting that specify what they want to see from a writer. You can find these guidelines in a number of places -- the agency's website, Publisher's Marketplace, Jeff Herman's Guide to Literary Agents, the Writers' Digest Guide to Agents, Agent Query.....you get the idea. (Sometimes you'll find contradictory information on different sites -- this may be due to changes in policy at the agency, some websites or blogs copying old information or not updating their information, agencies sometimes forget where they've posted guidelines -- in these cases, default to what's on the agency's website and state, in your query letter, "As per your website, I am attaching..." or "As per your guidelines in Publisher's Marketplace, please find the first five pages following my query.")

Most agents request a query letter, a one-page synopsis, and the first five pages of the novel. Some don't ask for a synopsis (and bless their hearts). Some ask for just the first page or just a query letter (in which case you need to make sure that query letter is razor sharp with a great hook).

BUT...and this is important...you need to find out what the agent you are querying is requesting and follow those guidelines to the letter.

Why?

Because, for one thing, you're building a professional relationship with the agent -- you need to demonstrate what kind of client you are going to be from the get-go. Being able to follow the guidelines signals to an agent that you are a professional and you have taken the time to find out what the agent wants.

The agency for which I read is pretty generous and asks for an email query, and a one-page synopsis and the first FIFTY pages as attachments in PDF or MS Word files (and no, I still won't tell you who the agency is, you have to go find that out on your own because, even if I did tell you, there's no guarantee they are the right agency for you -- you have to do your research to find that out). Amazing, right? Would you be surprised if I told you a significant number of queries come in with the fifty pages in the body of the email? Or that a number of them provide less than ten pages of the novel? Every time I encounter a submission with fewer than fifty pages, I have to wonder why because this is EXACTLY what I wish most agents would do and what email has made possible (the query letter actually hearkens back to a time before it was easy to create copies of your work, a time before photocopiers, when it was likely that you had only one copy of your manuscript and it was much too valuable to send to an agent or editor on the off-chance that he (usually a 'he') would like it).

And yet...there are writers who don't take advantage of being able to send 50 pages of their manuscript.

This is a huge signal to the agent about what kind of client the writer is likely to be.

Now what about that attachment vs. in-the-body-of-the-email thing? Again, follow the guidelines. It may seem fussy or unnecessary, but the agent has his or her reasons for requesting submissions in a certain format. You are sending one manuscript. Agents and their readers are looking at hundreds a month.

If an agent requests submissions in the email, send it to yourself first to make sure your formatting holds and doesn't do anything weird. You would be AMAZED at how often in-the-body-of-the-email submissions come through single-spaced and with no indentations at the beginning of paragraphs -- all of which makes it much more difficult to read. And, believe me, you don't want to make it harder for the agent to read your work.

So...
Do look up the submissions guidelines for each agent you are querying
Do follow those guidelines to the letter

Don't send your email submission without checking the formatting first

And remember that the way you present your manuscript to the agent says a lot about the type of client you are likely to be.

Next week I'll take on submission formatting and explain why Standard Manuscript Formatting is important.