How to Prepare Your Manuscript for Publication, According to Three Publishing Experts

Producing a book is quite possibly the hallmark accomplishment in a writer’s career. You string words into sentences, those sentences are weaved into paragraphs and those paragraphs become pages of (hopefully) scintillating thought poured out from your creative stores and drizzled across the canvas of a blank document. It’s magical.

There are other gratifying achievements, but mostly they lack the wow factor of offhandedly telling people at nightclubs, on first dates and during class reunions that you just finished a novel or a memoir or a sci-fi thriller. You’re an author. You rock by default. If you want to actually get people to read it and even shake out a few coins as a reward for your hard wordsmithing, you have to start early — before your manuscript is finished, before you shop for a publisher and certainly before you practice your barely legible book-signing signature.

Part of that preparation means getting familiar with the spotlight. “A lot of people are strong in their material and know their topic, but they aren’t comfortable sharing that in a public way, whether it’s on radio or television, in print or online,” said Regina Brooks, lead agent and president of Serendipity Literacy Agency in New York City. “The first important thing is to make sure that you are psychologically prepared to expose yourself.”

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That might look like therapy for some, a public speaking course for others, but readying for the floodlights of noticeability is an essential step one. Cultivating a following, increasing your visibility and branding yourself in a niche — as a relationship expert, as a young adult novelist, as a parenting blogger-turned-author — are steps two, three and four. Here are tips from three publishing industry insiders on building a platform in anticipation of your completed masterpiece.

Create a social media fraternity.

When Susan Schneider co-authored The Alpha Woman Meets Her Match with Dr. Sonya Rhodes, she was intentional about aligning with folks on Twitter and Facebook who had similar topical interests. “I read and read and read the websites that were relevant to us — Slate, Salon, Jezebel, The Hairpin, The Frisky — and kept up with the writers and what they were writing about. I’d follow them, comment on their articles, message them and offer to send our book for review. I used everything I could think of,” she said of her tactical engagement, which also included contacting authors of similar titles.

Rather than obsessing over the numbers associated with a social media account, Brooks agrees that the focus should be on communing with existing and potential readers. “You can buy Twitter and Facebook followers. They have algorithms out there. Now, are those people reading your blog? Are they replying to your tweets? Are they really engaged with you and the topic? Probably not,” she warned. In short, concentrate on quality, not quantity. High numbers may initially impress — and kind of make you feel like the popular kid in the cafeteria — but publishers and agents prefer the development of an actual audience to the smoke and mirrors of a manufactured one.

Sharpen your public communication skills.

We, the people, run into them way too often — folks who really don’t know what they’re talking about, but deliver their nonsense so authoritatively and convincingly, we almost believe them. That’s the sign of having great communication skills and you’re going to need those. “Some people are excellent on radio, but get fidgety and uncomfortable on television. Not everybody is going to have an opportunity to try to figure it out on the fly,” said Brooks. “Practice by filming yourself. See what feels right for you. You might say ‘OK, you know what? TV — and that includes YouTube or Vimeo — is probably not my thing right now.’ Find out which format you work best in.”

Do the same for radio by compiling a list of questions, asking people in your inner circle to pretend to interview you and taping yourself to prepare. Put together some talking points for your preferred medium and siphon your thoughts and expertise down to bite-sized chunks. “Organize some highlights and pare them down even more so you can make points about the material when you need them. Write a list of things you might want to blog about too — on your own blog or as a guest blogger — that will encourage your readership to want to pick up your book,” she added.

Get yourself a strong supporting cast.

“The one piece of advice that I always pass on: get a publicist for your first book. You can learn from him or her the first time and then maybe you won’t need that person the second time,” shared Christina Katz, author of Get Known Before the Book Deal and trainer for writers aspiring to push their careers into next-level prosperity. She had an in-house publicist for her first book, she said, but by her second, that luxury had gone the way of bigger budgets. Still, the learning experience had an indelible effect on two subsequent books.

Schneider had been twice published prior to the release of her latest project. But they were products of the pre-Internet era, which obviously changed everything from pace to communication, so she leaned on the expertise of her network. “We wanted to go as far as we could with promotion, so we had a great team at William Morrow, which is now an imprint of HarperCollins. They went after TV and radio shows,” she said. “We also hired a freelance PR consultant who helped us do a great deal of blogging for The Huffington Post and Psychology Today. We were cranking out blogs as fast as we could do them.” The connections and combined experience of a writer’s village are invaluable.

Hit the ground running with an agent.

In addition to helping would-be authors perfect their strongest proposals before they submit them to any publisher, a valuable agent is a writer’s advocate and a champion for their personal brand. “The book is no longer just the book. You look at the book as content, and you want somebody who can take the concept and monetize it,” advised Brooks, herself an author of You Should Really Write a Book: How to Write, Sell and Market Your Memoir.

Depending on the size and type of publisher you’re trying to court, you may not need an agent, but a good one in your corner will be able to stretch your content into more opportunities. “You want someone who’s not just going to look at your print and eBook rights, but someone who’s going to leverage those rights for your financial gain,” Brooks added. “You want an agent to be able to sell your foreign rights and your first serial rights and expand those into webisodes or television.” See? Sometimes it’s nice to have a co-investor in the mission to build and broaden your platform.

Consider micropublishing your book idea.

Even journalists and bloggers with publishing credentials and valuable experience need some help making the transition to authorship, said Katz. It takes training to get to the marathon of writing that becomes book form. “Very few people are actually prepared to write a book,” Katz explained. “Before they start talking about platform and thinking about writing, I have to get them ready.” The process, she added, walks aspiring authors through increasingly meatier writing-for-publication assignments, starting with short pieces, building up into a niche and then adding even more experience writing in that specialty. She then suggests micropublishing, a short book printed electronically, as the next step.

Katz said, “If you told me, ‘I have a great idea for a book,’ I would ask you, ‘Why wouldn’t you self-publish a short version of your bigger idea as a way of making your mark and test-marketing it?’ You might say, ‘I don’t want to tap into that until I’m really ready to go for it in a big way.'” But, Katz warned, “You’re not going to be able to impress an agent or a publisher unless you have an established platform and you can show you understand these types of skills. So what better way to do it than to actually do it?” Micropublishing may seem like you’re ruining the big reveal with a premature sneak peek, but it may be what writers need to pique publishers’ interest.

Get some initial feedback from your peers.

You should absolutely force your manuscript upon family and friends and ask for their sincere feedback, which naturally is their cue to shower you with endless ego-boosting compliments and positive affirmations. Alternatively, the online space offers up platforms to get unbiased reaction to your work to see if it’s good (or not). One to try: wattpad.com which, at 25 million subscribers, claims to be the world’s largest community of readers and writers.

“People post a portion of their manuscript or the whole thing and get feedback,” Brooks explained. “It’s a great way to get readership prior to publication or even prior to getting an agent. I think the harder genre to find a platform is in fiction. You need discoverability and you have to show an agent or a publisher that once your book is published, people will discover it because they have already discovered you.” She and fellow agents look to that site and others like it to see whose manuscript or material has the panache to resonate with an audience. “In fact, we just signed someone up who had a million people read her material,” she said. “It definitely made us look at this person with eager eyes.”

Janelle Harris resides in Washington, D.C., frequents Twitter and lives on

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