Are You and Your Book Ready for an Agent or Publisher?

When my children were young there was a wonderful climbing tree in our front yard. You had to be a certain height to reach the bottom branch and pull yourself up into the arms of the tree. Very young children often asked if I could help them up onto that branch. Not wanting anyone to get hurt, my answer was, “When you can pull yourself up, you can climb the tree.”

How does this apply to writing and getting published? Let’s discuss the often-dreaded synopsis. You must know your story well to write a decent synopsis. Many editors offer synopsis writing services for authors and there certainly can be a time to use one of those services, but I would counter that if you’re not ready to write a halfway decent one yourself, you’re probably not quite ready to submit your manuscript.

I’ll be the first to admit that writing a novel or work of nonfiction is a different skill from crafting the synopsis, but they truly complement each other. For the synopsis you need to have identified the strongest components of your work. You’ll need both the surface level – who, what, where, when – and the deeper why, blended into a compelling and clear summary.

Being an author means you spend half your time writing and half your time selling your work. An author must be able to describe and sell their book to an agent, a publisher, and to readers, even if self-publishing. In fact, if you’re self-publishing you’re the sales team. Either way, you’ll need strong synopses of different lengths to sell your masterpiece! Think of the synopsis as a way to ensure you know your work on every level and can discuss it clearly without hesitation. Until you have that piece, you’ve only done half the job.

Once you’ve got the goods, a great manuscript and a solid synopsis, you’re ready to query or publish. We’ll save the art of the query for another time!