If you’ve looked through a recent edition of Writer’s Mar-
ket you already know that electronic submissions are the
most popular format for manuscript submission these
days. In fact, many publishers no longer accept paper
manuscripts.  

There are several things that authors can do to make their
electronic submissions appear more professional, and to
help them move through the consideration and response
process more smoothly.

Yes, email is much less formal than a paper submission,
but this is not a good excuse to attach your manuscript to a
blank email. I still get a good number of submissions that
arrive this way, with no subject line, no cover letter, no
synopsis, just the manuscript and a blank email. I’m not
sure what authors think, but if they think that not having a
subject line, cover letter, or synopsis is going to intrigue
me so that I read the submission straight away, they are
mistaken. My expectation is that at many houses these
submissions are relegated to the recycle bin. At Black Vel-
vet Seductions they are filed with other submissions but
without anything to judge the genre, length, plot suitabil-
ity, or sensuality level the manuscript is considered very
low priority. Include a cover letter and a synopsis with
your submission!

 Realize that response times at all publishing houses are
slower than most of us who work at them would like them
to be. If you include only your email address and a phone
number as a means of contacting you, and then you
change your email or your phone number we will have no
way of reaching you to contract your manuscript. Yes, I
have had this happen, more than once. Be sure to include
full contact information in your cover letter, on your
synopsis, and on the first page/cover page of your
manuscript, just as you would with a paper submis-
sion.

 Check formatting guidelines for the publishing com-
pany you are submitting to. Black Velvet Seductions
accepts manuscripts in Word, rich text, and text only for-
mats. Manuscripts that arrive in other formats cannot be
processed and so must wait while we contact the author
for another version of the manuscript.

Format your manuscript so that the synopsis is one file,
your manuscript is another file. Do not send individual
chapters. No one at any publishing house has time to
paste separate chapters into a single document. It will wait
a long time for review if we have to find time to do this.

 Yes, email is much less formal, however that is not an ex-
cuse to just throw together an email cover letter, com-
plete with spelling and grammatical errors. In most cases,
your email is the first introduction the editor will have to
you and your book. Proof read your email. Make sure
it shines as much as your book.