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Local Authors => Writing Group => Topic started by: stacer on July 08, 2004, 09:06:46 PM

Title: DAW looking for SF/F
Post by: stacer on July 08, 2004, 09:06:46 PM
I was browsing on the Penguin Putnam site and found this:

Quote
DAW Books is currently accepting manuscripts in the genre of Science Fiction/Fantasy. Please refer to DAW's Submission Guidelines (http://www.penguinputnam.com/static/packages/us/about/dawsub.htm) for more information.


They still take unsolicited manuscripts. Just thought I'd throw that out there for anyone who might want the info.
Title: Re: DAW looking for SF/F
Post by: EUOL on July 08, 2004, 10:13:29 PM
They have a quick turn-around time too.  Both manuscripts I sent them were back in about a month.  

(Actually, that's too quick--it means that they didn't really give the manuscript much of a glance.)

DAW's a great house--good with promotion, great at keeping their authors' backlists in the stores.  They don't publish as many books as other companies, but the tend to publish very high quality works.  

They, along with Tor, were my top two choices for publishing houses.  I would have loved working with them, but I guess it just wasn't meant to be.  
Title: Re: DAW looking for SF/F
Post by: fuzzyoctopus on July 09, 2004, 08:37:47 PM
/me wonders idly how long it would take her to finish the novel she started if she did nothing else apart from going to work.
Title: Re: DAW looking for SF/F
Post by: EUOL on July 09, 2004, 10:02:33 PM
* EUOL suggests that Fuzzy just promise herself she's going to write two hours a day, no matter what.  She can do it while JT plays video games.
Title: Re: DAW looking for SF/F
Post by: fuzzyoctopus on July 09, 2004, 10:10:10 PM
He plays video games?!

(He's been too busy to play more than an hour or two on weekends for a while now.  Perhaps a better idea would be to write whenever he is at Game Den.)


ETA: good grief my typings is shot to heck
Title: Re: DAW looking for SF/F
Post by: Spriggan on July 12, 2004, 09:22:06 AM
I find it odd that in the submission guidelines the required method for attaining a wordcount is a method that only gives you a rough estimate.  Why not say "Use you WordPro's built in wordcount feature, if you're not useing a PC then use the following method."
Title: Re: DAW looking for SF/F
Post by: EUOL on July 12, 2004, 07:51:30 PM
Because editors are a silly bunch, each one with their own 'right' way of doing things.

However, no editor is going to be able to judge the difference in a novel-length manuscript between a few thousand words.  Most of the wordcount methods give you roughly the same number.
Title: Re: DAW looking for SF/F
Post by: Peter Ahlstrom on July 15, 2004, 03:42:40 AM
word count in publishing is NOT...um...a count of the words. What it is is a measurement of how much space/total pages/column inches (for magazines) a work will take up.

It makes a lot of sense in magazine publishing to use (some sort of) standardized manuscript format word count, because if you cheat, it can cause big problems with layout. But I don't see how it matters near as much in novel writing, since books are all different lengths and if you don't hit your multiple of 8 pages (for press purposes) they just add some blank pages in there...