Clearly you all are aficionados of angels dancing on the head of a pin. How else to explain the 6point fonts required to put ALL that info in your headers and footers?
First, a manuscript page is NOT the place where you put all that stuff. It goes in your cover letter. If you are sending ms pages, you can include a title page with contact info. It looks like this:
(1/3 of the way down the page and centered) -
TITLE
by
YOU
YOUR NAME
Your physical Address
City, State Zip
Telephone:
Email:
That's it. NOTHING MORE.
Your header should be: Title/Last name (yours of course) on the left side
Your footer should be: page number on the right side
The following should NOT be in the header or footer: your address or phone number and the word count, or heaven forfend MY name. If you insist on putting word count somewhere in the submission put it on the title page. If I want to know, I'm going to click "word count" rather than look at the title page or try to enlarge the font on the header enough to read it.
The following should not be ANYWHERE on your manuscript: copyright, (c) year, "rights available", "all rights reserved".
Any questions?
6 comments:
Things that should never appear on a query but sadly commonly do:
1) CONFIDENTIAL! TOP SECRET!
2) (PS This is my Aunt Blarney's favorite part).
3) :) ;) :( :0 or other smileys
4) Stickers
5) Photos of your fattest chicken
You balk at comments questioning your evilness, and then you continue to post clear, helpful information on your blog that allows writers their best chance to not mess up the little stuff.
What do you want from us???
world peace!
Oh, fine then.
Kaleb, you're a teenager?
Wow, it's pretty awesome how organized you are.
And you are learning about the industry from one of the best ;-)
Now, if only I could master MS Word 2007 formatting! I am going to let you in on a secret. I have created a new watermark for my paper. It reads, "You will buy this manuscript" ever so faintly. Almost impercetible, except to the subliminal consciousness of the editor who reads it.
It's SO easy to make mistakes in formatting - I know a newbie who forgot to include her own name on her title page. Yeah. Newbie rhymes with idiot.
Always good to read nuts and bolts posts. Thanks!
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