I’m half a page from finishing “Civilised People”! Ever since I finished my Real estate course last week, I’ve jumped right back into it and now is almost done on that last story. Great progress there…

• This is part of an on-going blog series called “Being a Professional Manga Artist in the West“. The Table of Contents is here.
• You can buy my “Queenie Chan: Short Stories 2000-2010” collection as a $4.99 ebook. Get it from Smashwords, Amazon, Apple iBooks, Nook.

Part 2b: Putting Together a Submission

Here is a list of things a manga submission should include. Just because this is a list, it does not mean that this is the list. Use this only as a guide, not as the gospel.

1. A Title Page – This should have your name, the story’s name, and your contact details on it. It’s best if you put your contact details (address, email, phone) on the header/footer of each page, but it’s not a big deal if you don’t have that.
2. Table of Contents – Not necessary, but makes it look more professional.
3. A One-Page Summary of your Story – This is extremely important, and should be no longer than 1.5 pages. This page is the first impression of your story the editor/publisher is going to get, so you need to summarise your story well and show that you understand what it’s truly about. Never waffle, and keep your language simple and minimal, almost report-style. This is often the hardest part of the whole submission, because if you lose the editor’s attention here, they’ll stop reading and move onto the next submission.
4. Character Summaries – This will include a full-body shots or head shots of all your major characters, plus half-a-page summary of each character. This is the section you get to show that your characters are interesting and well-developed, so keep that in mind when you write your character descriptions.
5. Volume Summaries – If your story is told over multiple books, then it’s best to summarise the plots of each in point form. Even if your story is told in a single book, it’s best to show that you have a well thought-out, orderly plot. Only a few sentences for each chapter will do, and preferably no more than 1-2 pages per book.
6. Manga Page Samples – Always make sure you have 6-12 finished pages of your story, to include as part of your submission. If the editor made it this far into your submission, then they’ll want to see your drawing and story-telling skills. Mind you, don’t send illustrations or character profiles unless you’re looking for work as a cover artist. The point here is to show you can tell stories in comic format, and if you can’t, the submission gets put aside.

This has covered most of the basics of a manga submission. Remember to use a legible font, to always use spell-check, and to structure your submission in a way that’s easy to follow. Watch your grammar and punctuation, and to not ramble or waffle. If you’re submitting via a submissions guideline, always check your submission against those guidelines before you send it in.

For people who still need guidance, I have here an old PDF submission from 2004 to TOKYOPOP (all the manga pages have been removed. Read them here: http://www.queeniechan.com/manga/twinside/1/). It’s for ‘TwinSide,’ a romantic comedy set in a high school, and it shows an example of how I structured my submission. The way I write these things haven’t changed much, but you should only use it only as an example. Download it here: www.queeniechan.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/TwinSideSub.pdf

Part 2c: Sending a Submission

These days, most submissions are done via email, so it’s rare for a publisher to even want paper submissions. If you do send a paper submission, make sure you never send originals, because an editor will just lose it in the piles of papers in their office. Always send copies, and if you want your submission back, include a self-addressed and stamped envelope for the editor to use. No one is going to send your submission back to you on their dime.

The best piece of advice I can give someone trying to get published:
You should never, ever just send your work to a publisher, then sit around waiting for a reply. That’s the worst thing you could possibly do. There’s no guarantee that you’ll even get a reply, so what you should be doing is starting work on a new story or a new pitch. If you’re a manga artist, that can mean self-publishing, working on and hopefully finishing your web-comics, starting a new story, or just doing work in general. In other words: continue working, drawing/writing and making pitches. Don’t stop working.

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Next Wednesday, I talk about getting rejected… which happens to everyone.

This is the last week of my real estate course, and there’s only the one big accounting exam left on Friday! Getting back to finishing the last 6 pages of “Civilised People” next week!

• This is part of an on-going blog series called “Being a Professional Manga Artist in the West“. The Table of Contents is here.
• You can buy my “Queenie Chan: Short Stories 2000-2010” collection as a $4.99 ebook. Get it from Smashwords, Amazon, Apple iBooks, Nook.

 

Part 2a: Submission Policies

When a publisher is open for submissions, they will have a submission guideline on their website somewhere. All publishers who are in business ought to have a website these days, so do take note if one doesn’t – that would be a little odd in this day and age.

Anyway, make sure you read their submission guideline and follow all the instructions on it. It doesn’t matter how well you write or draw if you can’t follow simple instructions. This is especially important when the guidelines cover genres or formats that the publisher accepts. If you submit a romance novel to a horror publisher, it won’t leave a good impression of you on that publisher. It shows that you have no idea what books they publish, and no inclination to do research.

A guideline will cover the things you need in a submission, but if you’ve been invited to submit something privately, you’ll have to come up with a professional-looking submission on your own. This isn’t as hard as it sounds – as I said before, a submission is a summary of your story, and as long as you give a concise and accurate summary, it should be fine.

Unfortunately, giving a good summary doesn’t mean a publisher will green-light your book. A publishing schedule is dependent on the needs of the market and that particular publishing house, so if you’re rejected, it could be any number of reasons. Most of them probably have nothing to do with the quality of your submission, though I must point out that ‘pitching’ is an art form in itself. A good writer may not be able to ‘sell’ their work well, so it’s important you take that into account when you write your pitch. You’re a salesman, not a creative, when you pitch.

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Next Wednesday, I detail what’s going to be in your pitch. (Meanwhile, I guess you can scour the Internet for publishers looking for open submissions.)

Just want to clarify that “Section 2: Getting a Manga Published” will be about getting your manga published by a publisher, NOT self-publishing. Self-publishing (as ebooks and print books) will be addressed in “Section 3“. Section 2 comes first because the majority of questions I get asked are “how do I get a publisher to publish my work” sort of questions.

• This is part of an on-going blog series called “Being a Professional Manga Artist in the West“. The Table of Contents is here.
• You can buy my “Queenie Chan: Short Stories 2000-2010” collection as a $4.99 ebook. Get it from Smashwords, Amazon, Apple iBooks, Nook.

 

 

Part 2: Manga Submissions

What is a ‘submission’? Well, there’s many names for it (including a ‘pitch’), but generally it’s a summary of the story you want to write/draw, and which you want to get published. There’s no set way to create a submission (it’s dependent on the needs of each individual publisher), but they usually follow the same outline.

To put it in the simplest terms, a ‘submission’ is your sales pitch for why a publisher will want to invest in and publish your story.

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If you want to get your submission to a publisher, the easiest way is to submit directly to a publisher. Contrary to popular belief, this is actually possible – provided that the publisher has an ‘open door’ policy and accepts submissions from strangers over the internet.

To be honest, this is very rare. Due to the vast numbers of wannabe comic book artists (manga-style or otherwise), it’s impossible for most publishers to have an ‘open door’ approach. They would get buried in submissions, and have all the problems of having to sift and read through them, not to mention sending out rejection letters. Most publishers (and editors especially) are overworked, and don’t have time to do things like this. So they would just rather shut their doors and focus on what they have, or they turn to the agents.

For that reason, most publishers are ‘invitation-only,’ meaning they’ve either seen your work elsewhere (online or print), or saw your work at a portfolio review and is interested in working with you. Usually an editor will contact you directly, and invite you to either submit more art samples or pitch your own story. Alternatively, a writer that a publisher is already working with likes you and your work, and makes a point of wanting to work with you (which is what happened to me on Kylie Chan’s book ‘Small Shen’, or on Dean Koontz’s ‘Odd Thomas’ series).

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So, for the purposes of this post, let’s assume that you’ve either been invited, or there is a comic publisher with an ‘open door’ policy. How should you approach them? Find out next Wednesday!

• This is part of an on-going blog series called “Being a Professional Manga Artist in the West“. The Table of Contents is here.
• You can buy my “Queenie Chan: Short Stories 2000-2010” collection as a $4.99 ebook. Get it from Smashwords, Amazon, Apple iBooks, Nook.

 

Part 1: Introduction

When people email me asking ‘how do I get published as a manga artist,’ they expect me tell them which manga publisher to submit to. Usually I end up telling them that there are no more publishers in North America who publish western manga exclusively, and even all the publishers I’ve worked for since 2007 are imprints of major book publishers (not comic book publishers). So if I’m going to give advice, it’ll mostly be for book publishers in the bookstore market and not comic book publishers, since that’s my personal experience.

Before I start, I ought to tell you that selling comics in the bookstore market is a different game to selling comics in general. In the bookstore market, you’re part of the book-selling world, a multi-billion dollar industry that dwarfs the comic book market. For that reason, comics and manga are treated as categories in bookstores, rather than mediums (what they rightfully should be) or even genres.

If you’ve ever seen an artsy indie comic being shelved next to Pokemon in a bookstore, I’m sure you know what I mean. It’s an on-going problem that isn’t going to change any time soon (even if big chain bookstores disappear).

Another problem is that unlike prose fiction, manga and comics are rarely created in advance. Most prose fiction writers will finish a book and then mail it off to agents and publishers, but manga artists don’t have that luxury. The costs of producing a comic is so large compared to prose, that few people hoping to get published will attempt it without first getting a publisher’s backing. This is something that definitely makes getting a manga published harder than other kinds of books.

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Anyway, this section of posts intends to cover the entire production process of creating a book, starting from submitting to a publisher, signing a contract, being paid an advance, getting the book edited, having the book ordered, having it shipped, and having it either sold or returned at the end. It’ll also covers any royalties you earn (85% of books don’t earn out their advance, and hence the authors get no royalties), which usually comes after all this. NB. If your work contract is a lump sum of money upfront, then it’s a work-for-hire contract and you never earn any royalties after. You also retain no rights to your work.

Along the way, I’ll try and cover any pitfalls, and what to be mindful of. This is especially important in the contracts section, because contracts are what have undergone drastic changes in book publishing. People have always signed bad publishing contracts, but it only extended to the book they’re signing for, and not to any other work the author produces aside from that book. These days, contract terms may cover what the author can or cannot do outside their book(s) for the publishers, so BEWARE.

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Next Wednesday, I’ll be tackling the easy part. Submitting the story you’ve written to a publisher, and how to compile a submission for an original manga.