A: Richard
Hull, Executive Director, TAA:
"Self interest
indicates you should send the proposal out to as many publishers
as you can, trying to maximize your chances of getting anacceptance.
But this may lead to other moral dilemmas: what if you get an
early response, accept the offer, and just as you are about to
close the deal you get another, better offer?
On the other
hand, decent consideration for the potential publishers and their
referees indicates you should decide on an order of submission, then send
it to the first and wait until you get a definite answer. That may result
in long delays until you get an acceptance, necessitating revisions because
the manuscript has aged.
One possibility
is to try to escape between the horns of the dilemma: send it
out to the first publisher on your list (perhaps preceded by a phone
call asking what their review time is), give that publisher a
decent amount of time to review it; when that time is up, send
it to another.
If you have the
ms out to several publishers, perhaps as the result of adopting
my suggestion, and you get an acceptance from one, you may wish, out
of decency, to retract the submission to the others.
Alternatively,
you could be completely self-interested, send it out to a bunch,
collect offers, bet a bidding war started if you can, and take the highest
bidder. You'd better be sure that the highest bidder will accept subsequent
manuscripts or you may have burned bridges for future publications.
It may shorten
things and avoid the delays caused by sending a proposal to inappropriate
publishers if you call ahead and ask if the publisher would be interested
in a proposal/book of your book's description. Sometimes the formal
proposal, such as our attorney Michael Lennie uses, can shorten the process.
Ultimately what
you do will be an expression of your character, your needs, your
estimation of probabilities, and how thoroughly you research potential publishers."
A: Michael
Lennie, Lennie Literary & Authors Attorneys:
"If you are talking
about commercial publishers (as opposed to juried academic publications),
sending to multiple publishers is definitely the norm. This is
the best leverage available. There is no moral dilemma whatsoever.
I never send out multiple submissions without advising each recipient
that I am doing so, and I wait to receive multiple responses before
prematurely jumping at an offer. I never send out proposals without first
sending a query asking if the publisher would like to receive a proposal.
If I should be
so lucky as to receive multiple offers, terrific news! I am now
'in high cotton' as my west Texas (and I suppose Southern) friends
would say."
