AllThingsThatMatterPress

 

 

How to Submit

To

ALL THINGS THAT MATTER PRESS

 

SORRY-WE ACCEPT SUBMISSIONS FROM AUTHORS ONLY AND NOT FROM LITERARY AGENTS

 

 

 

FAILURE TO FOLLOW THESE SIMPLE REQUIREMENTS WILL RESULT IN REJECTION AND NO RESPONSE!

 

1)We accept manuscripts by email submission only.

 

2)Please send a summary of your work in an email along with the first 3 chapters as an attachment. WE OCCASIONALLY INCLUDE SUBMISSION NOTICES ON THE BOTTOM OF THE HOME PAGE. PLEASE READ NOTICES.

 

3)The summary should be in the email. The subject of the email should say: Submission, followed by your manuscript title.

 

4)For short story anthologies and poetry submissions please include the entire manuscript as an attachment. Poetry must be a minimum of 35K words.

 

 

 ***

 

 IMPORTANT!!!!!!!!

 

PASTE THE FOLLOWING IN YOUR EMAIL SUBMISSION

 

I have read your website and contract and understand the content.

(Failure to include the above statement will result in rejection)!!!!!!!!

***

 

WE DO NOT ACCEPT CHAP BOOKS - FULL-LENGTH MANUSCRIPTS ONLY-MIN. 45K WORDS. WE DO NOT PUBLISH SINGLE SHORT STORIES-ONLY BOOK LENGTH MANUSCRIPTS ARE CONSIDERED!

 

Please use these guidelines: 

 

READ THE CONTRACT PRIOR TO SUBMISSION AS IT IS

 

NOT SUBJECT TO CHANGE BY AUTHORS

 

WE WILL NOT RESPOND TO SUBMISSIONS THAT ARE NOT IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE FOLLOWING

 

PLEASE USE THE FOLLOWING AS A

 

CHECKLIST

 

THESE ARE REQUIREMENTS!!!!

 

 

1.      Send submissions by email attachment as a Word .doc (Microsoft Office).DO NOT SUBMIT IN 2010 WORD-WE CAN ACCEPT UP TO THE 2007 WORD DOC 

 

2.      On the first page of the manuscript include your name and your email/contact information.  

 

3.      Times Roman 12pt./ DOUBLE SPACED--No fancy fonts or page break symbols. SECTION BREAKS WITHIN A CHAPTER MUST BE ***

      USE- DOUBLE SPACE--3 ASTERISKS CENTERED--DOUBLE SPACE FOR SECTION BREAKS!

 

 

4.     If there are graphics, describe their nature in the cover email.  All graphics must be black and white. While they can be included in the initial submission, they must be removed and submitted separately if the manuscript is approved for publication. At that point graphics must be submitted separately as jpgs and any text on the graphic must be a part of the jpg. Details provided at the appropriate time.

 

5.       The manuscript must be completed.  

 

6.    Indicate the word count for the entire manuscript in the email

 

7.   Make sure your book is polished and all of your typos are corrected.  Manuscripts with poor spelling and grammar and/or multiple typographical will be sent back to you for correction/editing.

 

8. EDIT, EDIT, EDIT!!!  HAVE SOMEONE EDIT YOUR BOOK-YOU CANNOT DO IT YOURSELF! If you have not even done a spelling/grammar check, do not submit!

 

9. ONLY BOOK LENGTH MANUSCRIPTS ARE ACCEPTED.

 

10. IF YOUR BOOK HAS BEEN PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED-INCLUDING SELF-PUBLISHED, YOU MUST TELL US THIS IN YOUR QUERY.

 

11. AUTHOR MARKETING PLAN -Please indicate what efforts you plan to market your book. In today's market, the author is pivotal in the success of any marketing strategy. What will you do to promote your  book? What are your plans as an author regarding future books?

 

Please send your work to allthingsthatmatterpress@gmail.com with SUBMISSION in the subject line.  We will acknowledge receipt promptly, and will notify you of our decision in a timely manner.

 

MAJOR GRAMMAR MISTAKES

 

We spend way too much editing time correcting mistakes in grammar!

 

Please use the following rules when you review your manuscript before submission. Even if your book is accepted and you are offered a contract, the following are going to be used in your edit-much of which you will have to do.

 

ONE SPACE BETWEEN SENTENCES IN FICTION

TWO SPACES BETWEEN SENTENCES FOR NON-FICTION

 

Grammar Guidelines

 

We receive many manuscripts that often mis-use the em dash, colon, semi-colon, and ellipsis. Over use of any of these grammar tools disrupts the flow of a book, not to mention that incorrect usage is … well, incorrect! Please read the following. If you over use these tools, then re-edit. In many cases, a simple comma, or creating two sentences out of one, works better.

 The em dash is significantly longer than the en dash and is usually used to separate parts of a sentence in standard English prose. Here are its major specific uses:

   1. An abrupt change in the flow of a sentence where the text description that follows the dash is unexpected or significantly deviates in tone from what came before it

   2. An abrupt termination, such as when a person is speaking and is suddenly interrupted before finishing a sentence

   3. A parenthetical remark — like this — where there is initially an abrupt change but the normal flow of the sentence returns after the second dash Em dash

The em dash (—), or m dash, m-rule, etc., often demarcates a parenthetical thought or some similar interpolation, such as the following from Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine:

    At that age I once stabbed my best friend, Fred, with a pair of pinking shears in the base of the neck, enraged because he had been given the comprehensive sixty-four-crayon Crayola box — including the gold and silver crayons — and would not let me look closely at the box to see how Crayola had stabilized the built-in crayon sharpener under the tiers of crayons.

It is also used to indicate that a sentence is unfinished because the speaker has been interrupted. For example, the em dash is used in the following way in Joseph Heller's

Catch-22:

     He was Cain, Ulysses, the Flying Dutchman; he was Lot in Sodom, Deirdre of the Sorrows, Sweeney in the nightingales among trees. He was the miracle ingredient Z-147. He was—

    "Crazy!" Clevinger interrupted, shrieking. "That's what you are! Crazy!"

    "—immense. I'm a real, slam-bang, honest-to-goodness, three-fisted humdinger. I'm a bona fide supraman."

 

If you’re using em dashes to indicate a trailing off in thought, you’re using them incorrectly.  Also, as with ellipses below, over use of em dashes breaks the flow of your story, and gives editors nightmares.

 

The colon has two uses:

    1. To indicate that what follows it is an explanation or elaboration of what precedes it (the rule being that the more general statement is followed by a more specific one) [There is one challenge above all others: the alleviation of poverty.]

    2. To introduce a list [There are four nations in the United Kindom: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.]

Note: A colon is never preceded by a white space, but it is always followed by a white space, and it is never followed by a hyphen or a dash.

Please don’t use a colon to introduce dialogue!  That’s why keyboards have commas!

 

The semicolon has two similar major uses:

 

    1. To join two complete sentences into a single written sentence when the two sentences are too closely related to be separated by a full stop and there is no connecting word which would require a comma such as 'and' or 'but' [It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.]

    2. To join two complete sentences into a single written sentence where the second sentence begins with a conjunctive adverb such as 'however', 'nevertheless', 'accordingly', 'consequently', or 'instead' [I wanted to make my speech short; however, there was so much to cover.]

 Keep in mind that one does not use a semicolon when there is a connecting word.  This is a common mistake. 

 Note: In the above uses, the semicolon is stronger than a comma but less final than a full stop.

 There is a minor use of the semicolon: to separate items in a list when one or more of those items contains a comma [The speakers included: Tony Blair, the Prime Minister; Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and Ruth Kelly, Secretary of State for Education & Skills.]

 

 

The ellipsis (...), sometimes called the suspension or omission marks, has three uses:

 

    1. To show that some material has been omitted from a direct quotation [One of Churchill's most famous speeches declaimed: "We shall fight them on the beaches ... We shall never surrender".]

    2.  To indicate suspense [The winner is ...]

    3.  To show that a sentence has been left unfinished because it has simply trailed off [Watch this space ...] The ellipsis indicates an unfinished sentence or thought. The thought or dialogue trails off. Do not overuse the ellipses. There should not be a lot of trailing thoughts in your book. It is not used when a thought is interrupted; that is the em dash.

 In general, treat an ellipsis as a three-letter word, constructed with three periods and two spaces, as shown here.

 In nonfiction writing one uses an ellipsis to indicate the deletion of one or more words in condensing quotes, texts, and documents. One must be especially careful to avoid deletions that would distort the meaning.

 In fiction writing, an ellipsis is usually meant to convey an unfinished thought designed to force the reader to use his/her imagination to discern what might come next. This is easily overdone, however, and can adversely impact the flow of a story. Because of their disruptive power, ellipses must be used very sparingly and only with careful prior consideration. Never resort to ellipses as a crutch or out of laziness.

Put quite succinctly by Deb Taber, Apex Book Company:

… those nasty little spots, the ones that make editors want to scratch their eyes out and scream … Those pesky little dots come in so handy that writers seem to want to toss them onto manuscripts by the handful. Or perhaps it isn’t intentional; they may get sneezed out onto the computer screen by writers allergic to the frustration of being unable to find the perfect transition …Writers, please, for the love of your story, just stop. Take your finger off the period key after just one stroke each and every time … They hurt your credibility as a writer … Do not use ellipses at the end of a scene unless you are absolutely certain that there is a grammatically logical reason for them to be there, such as to indicate the POV character’s mind drifting from the present scene into a flashback that is directly caused by the occurrences in the scene right before the ellipses. Remember, there is nothing wrong with the perfectly serviceable single period….

 

Put even more succinctly by Deb Harris, All Things That Matter Press:

As a general rule, I intensely dislike them, since they are so often over/mis-used.  Rarely, and I do mean rarely, have I encountered an author who understands the proper use of ellipses.  Hence the inordinate amount of attention given to them in these guidelines.  If I could give you one bit of advice, I’d echo Deb Taber’s comments above and add do not use ellipses unless you absolutely have no other alternative.

 

The parenthesis:

  Almost never used in novels.  So don’t use them in yours.