Not Everyone Accepts Electronic Submissions

Posted on May 17, 1997

Emailing submissions saves time and money for writers. It eliminates the need for writers to spend money on postage, to make endless copies of their material, and saves them trips to the mailbox.

Despite these facts, many large commercial publishers have not yet made the commitment needed to receive electronic submissions, and continue to accept only snail mail submissions. Even queries are still accepted only the old-fashioned way by many publishers. The book publishing industry is especially resistant to electronic submissions. Most book publishers do not accept submissions of any kind by email. Unfortunately, this is where it would save writers the most time and money.

Receiving electronic submissions raises the possibility of downloading viruses, which means there would have to be constant virus scanning. To do this, a publishing company would have to re-train its staff, and possibly upgrade its software. Book publishers are even reluctant to accept queries on-line. Emailing a query is so simple that some publishers believe that allowing electronic submissions would create an avalanche of submitted queries.

This should change in the future as the larger publishers train their staff to handle the situation, and as they face pressure from the smaller publishers who are willing to handle the additional volume of submissions, because of the prospect of increasing their chances of finding quality material. Eventually, this will force the large publishers to change their policies as more and more writers look to submit electronically.