The manuscript is finished, and the relief lasts about a day. Then comes the part nobody warns you about: preparing the submission itself. Agents read quickly, and plenty of promising submissions are set aside for reasons that have nothing to do with the writing. A wrongly named file, a synopsis that stops before the ending, a word count given as 187,432. None of it is difficult to fix. It just has to be checked, in order, before you press send.
Every agency sets its own rules, and they are not interchangeable. One wants a synopsis and three chapters. Another wants the first fifty pages. A third wants a short pitch in the body of an email and no attachments at all. Sending a full manuscript to an agent who asked for a sample does not show enthusiasm; it shows that you did not read.
Before you send anything, open the submissions page and note down:
If the guidelines contradict anything below, the guidelines win. Always.
Standard manuscript format exists so that an agent can read two hundred pages without friction. You do not need to be inventive here.
The title page needs your name, contact details, the title, the category and the word count. Nothing else. Skip decorative fonts and the copyright symbol.
Use British spelling throughout, and check it rather than trusting your memory: realise, colour, organise, travelled, defence. If you drafted on a US-based spellcheck, mixed conventions will have crept in. Dialogue punctuation catches people too. UK publishing typically uses single quotation marks, with double marks for a quote inside speech, but consistency matters more than the choice. Set your spellcheck to UK English and apply one style from page one to the end.
Put the word count on the title page, rounded to the nearest thousand. Not 89,347; 89,000. If the agent asks for it in a cover letter or an online form, use the same figure in both places.
Do not inflate it to sound substantial or shave it to sound tight. Agents can estimate length from the sample, and an inaccurate number makes them doubt everything else you have told them.
It also helps to know where your book sits. Adult literary and upmarket commercial fiction commonly falls somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000 words, with genre fiction often running longer and some categories deliberately lean. Children's and young adult books are shorter. These are conventions, not laws, and a strong book can break them. But if your manuscript falls well outside the usual range, know your reasons before an agent asks.
Most UK agents ask for one page; a few ask for two, and some accept a longer outline. Where the guidelines are silent, one page is the safer bet.
Write it in the present tense and third person, keep the main character's arc at the centre, and include the ending. This is the mistake that catches most writers: a synopsis that builds tension and then stops, as though an agent might take on the book to find out what happens. They will not. Name the twist, resolve the mystery, say who lives and who does not.
Keep it short. One paragraph of genuine, specific reason for approaching this particular agent: a book they represented, a subject they have said they want, a talk you attended. One paragraph about your book: title, category, word count, and what happens. One short paragraph about you, but only if it is relevant, such as previous publications, relevant professional experience or a course that means something.
Comparison titles work only when they are accurate and recent. "For readers of X and Y" is useful if both titles are recognisable and genuinely comparable. Leave it out otherwise.
Guidelines override preference. If an agent wants a PDF, send a PDF. If they ask for .docx, do not send an export from another program. Where there is no instruction, .docx is the safest default.
A clear naming convention saves the agent work and makes you look organised:
Adeyemi_TheLongField_Synopsis.docx
Adeyemi_TheLongField_FirstThreeChapters.docx
Keep the surname identical to the one in your email signature, avoid version numbers such as final-final-v3, and skip spaces and unusual punctuation where you can.
If the sample must be pasted into the email, paste the chapters and nothing else. No introduction explaining what follows, no elaborate formatting that will collapse in transit. Check that your spacing and indents survive the paste. Then send the whole thing to yourself and read it on a phone before it goes anywhere else.
Read the whole submission once as though you were the agent, with the guidelines page open in one tab and your draft in another. Then walk away for a few hours. Typos that were invisible on the first pass tend to surface on the second.
The waiting afterwards is the hard part, and it is long at most UK agencies. Keep writing while your submission is out; the next project is the best thing you can do with the time. If a rejection arrives with a specific note, take it seriously and send the work out again, a little sharper than before.
Photo: cocoparisienne / Pixabay
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