Gold4:

Golden Rule No. 4

Your first approach ... keep it brief

When contacting either a publisher or an agent about your book, first of all write a brief letter asking whether they would be prepared to see an outline of your idea. Alternatively you can make contact by telephone or e-mail, but the old-fashioned snail-mail letter can make a good impression provided you take care to make it worth reading.

For those who pay the price of a meal, I will be sending tips on how to design a letterhead that will take the eye of the publisher as well as the synopsis I prepared for one of my books that clinched an advance of more than £200,000 ($300,000).

Do not give too much of your idea away in the letter. Just say enough to capture their interest. Give a very brief pen-picture of yourself, including only facts that help convince the publisher/agent that you are authoratitive on your subject and capable of writing a book.

Let us suppose that you are an expert on the history of the Channel Islands. Your approach letter to a publisher could go something like this:

Dear Mr Jones,

I am approaching you with an idea for a book that you may wish to consider for your publishing list.

The working title for the book is Treasure Islands, and it tells the history of the Channel Islands from when they were first settled by French farmers, coming up through the era when they were under the heel of the Nazi jackboot and up to date to what can be described as Bergerac's Islands.

I am a 38-year-old history teacher, and I have uncovered many little-known facts about the Islands and their residents during many years of research since first visiting them twenty years ago.

Hopefully you would be prepared to see a synopsis of the book, along with a chapter-by-chapter breakdown.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

Do not write a rambling letter. You should be able to capture the publisher's interest in less than 200 words. Type it neatly and ensure that there are no spelling or grammatical errors. It will increase your chance of a quick reply if you enclose a stamped-addressed envelope.

How would you know the contact name at the publishers? You will find key names listed in, for example, two excellent UK publications, the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook (A&C Black, London) or The Writers' Handbook (London: Macmillan). The equally informative Writers Digest Books (F&W Publications, Ohio) give an all-embracing view of of the vast publishing empire in the United States.

In the shrinking world in which we live it is worth thinking internationally if you have a book that has a topic of interest beyond the boundaries of the country in which you reside. There is nothing to stop you submitting an idea to an overseas publisher, although any decent homeland publisher is certain to have foreign contacts and associates.

When boxing commentator Reg Gutteridge and I wrote a biography of Mike Tyson together we had excellent sales in the United States and Canada as well as in our home UK market.

You would be wise to telephone the publisher's office and ask the name of the person to whom you should send a preliminary letter, just in case the information in any book you use is out of date. It is possible that rather than the publisher, you will be given the name of an Editor. But at least you then have a contact. Make sure you get the correct title of the person to whom you will be addressing the letter.

Choose your publisher carefully. If you are writing about ornithology it would be pointless approaching publishers who specialise in military history. And it would be a waste of everybody's time if you submitted the Treasure Islands synopsis to a publisher of sports books.

I have produced a How to Impress a Publisher Portfolio that includes the contact addresses for many of the leading publishers and agents across the world. You can purchase it HERE. There are lists of publishers and literary agents, giving a summary of the type of book areas in which they specialise.

You may be able to swing a deal by offering to provide what is called camera-ready copy. For this you will need a printer that produces text better than 1,200dpi (dots per inch). I have often had books printed direct from my typescript, the first back in 1986 (Frank Bruno's Know What I Mean, which was one of the first books in Europe produced direct from an author's typescript). But generally speaking, publishers prefer to use their own type-setting agencies.

Should you approach an agent before going to a publisher? That is the topic of Golden Rule No 5.

Golden rule number 4 is to make an approach to a publisher/agent before submitting a synopsis. Keep it brief and to the point, and be careful to select the right publisher for the subject of your book.