Sam Knight’s Quick Tips for New Authors
Some of these tips come from Sam’s Book and are used here with permission. Please don’t copy them elsewhere, as that is copyright infringement. Please don’t use them and take credit for them, as that is plagiarism. If you find them helpful, consider purchasing a copy of Sam’s Book!
Sam’s Tips for New Authors
What is “Published?”
A general definition of published is to have made something available to the public. It doesn’t have to have been “for sale” or advertised or really much of anything; it merely needs to have been made publicly available, even if that was in a pretty limited way.
This is different than sharing your story with your writers group, which is there to help you make it better, or reading your story at a convention, which is not “making it available” (unless it is recorded and released).
For authors making stories available on Patreon, Wattpad, Medium, or the like., arguing that it was only to a small group, or behind a paywall, or that no one bought/read it, does not invalidate the argument that it was made available.
Why does this matter?
Once a story has been made available to the public, even if no one buys it, the first publication rights, or the ability to be the first to publish it, is gone. It is used up.
This is why many publishers don’t want stories authors have already had posted on their blog, website, social media, or whatever. People, especially those who already knew of the author (being the people most likely to purchase something from that author) have already had a chance at the story, so if they didn’t buy it then, why would they buy it from a different publisher now? And if they already got it, why would they want to pay to get it again?
What about copyrights?
Something you write is copyrighted as soon as you put it in a fixed form, meaning as soon as you write it down. Or record yourself saying it. Or anything that is a “tangible medium of expression.” This means you don’t have to worry about whether or not your story is copyrighted. It was, as soon as you wrote it. Even if that was on a napkin, in the back booth of a diner, with coffee as ink and a toothpick as a quill.
Are you still thinking about writing it but haven’t yet? It is not copyrighted. So, write it down. Or dictate it. And then it is copyrighted. But that does not mean it is registered.
Registering a copyright is a different thing. You do not have to register your copyright, but if you do want it registered, you have to actually contact the Copyright Office to do that. It is easiest to do it online here:
https://www.copyright.gov/registration/
Should you register a copyright? You have to decide that for yourself.
Why would you register for a copyright? First, if you are going to sue for copyright infringement, you will have to register the copyright before you can sue anyway. Second, it registers the date of the copyright in official records, just in case there ever is a lawsuit. And third, “When registration is made prior to infringement or within three months after publication of a work, a copyright owner is eligible for statutory damages, attorneys’ fees, and costs. ”
Should I take rejection personally?
No.
f you receive a rejection letter (from anyone, not just Knight Writing Press), it is important to keep a few things in mind. A rejection almost never has anything to do with you personally (and really almost never should), so you should do your best not to internalize it. The reverse is also true: you should never hold bad feelings for the person/business for their choice, because there is a very good chance you do not have enough information to know why or how they made that decision.
The reasons for a rejection—from anywhere, not just Knight Writing Press—are myriad. It could be the story/poem/art/etc. just did not catch the editor’s eye. It could be the editor did not feel it fit the project. It could be there were too many stories and not enough room/money to include them all and yours drew the short straw when a choice had to be made between two favorites. It could be yours was very similar to another story some other publication just published and the editor didn’t want their new publication to be compared with that other publication.
Nearly any reason you can imagine, that has nothing to do with you or the quality of your story, is an actual possible reason.
Here are some things to consider about your submission, to determine if perhaps there actually was a factor you may have had control over:
Did you follow the submission guidelines? Were you within the appropriate time frame? Was the story within requested word count limits? Did it fit the theme of the project? Did you submit the document in the correct file format? Did you submit the document with the correct formatting? Did you proof-read your document before submitting it? Did you provide contact information for yourself?
Like nearly everything, writing is a skill, and people who practice continue to improve. Submitting a story to a publisher is also a skill, much like going into a job interview. If you made any of the above mistakes, or some other not mentioned, do not berate yourself over it. Pick yourself up, learn from it, and keep on keeping on. That is how all of the best keep improving and moving forward.
Manuscript formatting.
Shunn’s formatting style is the generally accepted industry style. You can find it here: https://www.shunn.net/format/
Don’t use weird fonts. Stick with Times New Roman or Courier New.
Don’t use tabs or spaces to indent paragraphs. Use the First Line Indent formatting in your word processing program.
Don’t use hard returns at the end of sentences or paragraphs. Let your word processor handle that.
These options can be found under the Home tab and then the Paragraph pull down options in MS Word.
While some places do want “blind submissions” it can make it difficult to tell if we have the correct story. Please put your name and contact information (and page numbers) on your submissions.
Are typos a big deal?
A wrong word or a grammatical error is not really a big deal, but a ton of typos?
If you don’t care enough about your story to even run a spell check, then why should we? And why would we think you will care enough to do corrections and edits later?
Remember, an editor’s job isn’t to fix the little things for you that you couldn’t be bothered with, it’s to help with the things you needed help with so that you can write the best possible story.
Dialog tag punctuation rules.
“Hello.” He said. (This is Wrong.)
“He said.” is not a standalone sentence. It needs to be connected to the dialog with a comma and the capital removed.
“Hello,” he said.
or
“Hello,” John said.
Proper names are capitalized and do not necessarily mark the start of a new sentence.
“Hello,” he said “how are you?” (This is Wrong.)
or
“Hello” he said “how are you?” (This is Wrong.)
“How are you?” is a clause capable of standing alone. It needs to be separated out from the rest as a sentence, or correctly joined with the rest as a clause. This can be done with either a comma or a period, depending upon whether the author considers them separate statements.
“Hello,” he said. “How are you?”
or
“Hello,” he said, “how are you?”
or
“Hello,” John said, “how are you?”
He said, “My name is John,” and walked over to her, “How are you?” (This is Wrong.)
This is an example of a comma splice.
It needs to be broken up into separate sentences. Unlike correcting a comma splice in narrative text, you cannot correct them in dialog merely by adding conjunctions.
He said, “My name is John,” and walked over to her. “How are you?”
The proper use of question marks, exclamation points, ellipses, and em-dashes tend to confuse people a bit. Treat them as commas when using dialog tags.
“Hello?” she asked into the darkness. “Is anyone there?”
“Hot dog!” he cried, jumping into the air and pumping his fist.
“I love—” he cried out and suddenly stopped, realizing it wasn’t her after all.
“You’re so…” she whispered breathlessly.
The Em-Dash.
The em-dash should be used to represent interruptions or emphasis, not to replace semicolons when combining sentences.
The Hyphen is NOT an Em-Dash
The hyphen is our standard linking punctuation. It is used to combine two things into one, making them a compound object or thought. When used in place of an em-dash, which looks like this in comparison —, things get confusing and difficult for a formatter to fix. Use an actual em-dash or a double hyphen in your text so that the mistake doesn’t get missed.
The Ellipsis
The ellipsis is a tool that confuses many writers because it means that something has been left out, but it can mean that in two different ways.
First, it is used in excerpted quotes.
For example:
“The president … flew down to Mexico … for the weekend.”
In fiction writing, it is common for writers to use an ellipsis to indicate a trailing off, or incomplete thought. (This leads to the ellipses being referred to as suspension points in some style manuals.)
“I wonder where…?” The Professor’s voice trailed off as he noticed the writing on the tomb wall for the first time.
Leaving spaces before or after ellipses is a stylistic choice more than a hard rule (except at the end of a sentence). Those spaces can cause problems in e-books and are often added or taken out by publishers.
Song Lyrics, Business Names, and Real People.
You just probably shouldn’t use them.
Song lyrics are copyrighted. Just like the story you are writing. If you want to use the lyrics from a song in a story, you will need to get the permission of the copyright owner first. Even if you are just putting your story or blog up on the internet for free.
Yes, really. “Fair use” is not what most people think it is.
When it comes to real people and real businesses, if anything you say can be interpreted as slanderous, defamatory, misleading, or intended to hurt them, you shouldn’t. And you probably shouldn’t anyway, just to be safe.
Other IPs, Characters, or Fan Fiction.
Fanfiction is not “fair use.” For some reason people think that publishing fanfiction is okay. It is not. Not without express permission from the copyright owner. That applies whether you are only using a character or the world or both. If you don’t own the rights to it, it is not legal for you to publish derivative works.