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When you write a novel query, publishers may ask you to describe some similar, competing titles. Ideally you can come up with a few similar titles that were successful; that suggests that your title will be successful as well. If you’re pitching a superhero novel, here are a few titles that might be comparable to yours.  NOTE: If you’re looking to get a short story with superheroes published, check out this list of publishers instead.

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Susan Boyle is a 47 year-old, unemployed singer that is on the latest season of Britain’s Got Talent.  She is astonishingly talented.  Watching her compete in this contest will probably be like seeing Michael Phelps– or an alligator– participate in a high school swimming meet.

I bring up Doyle because I think that first-time novelists and comic book writers, especially young ones, face similar challenges.  Doyle doesn’t look like a singing sensation; teens don’t look like they’re worth publishing.  Doyle doesn’t have singing credentials; young authors are unpublished and often lack a college degree. When a publisher’s assistant reads through a young author’s query, there are twenty different sirens going off in his head, all screaming “this guy has no talent.”

Your window of opportunity to demonstrate your talent is exceedingly brief.  If your query is forgettable, the publisher will reject you without even looking at the sample.  If your first page is forgettable, you are done.  Etc.  If you have any reservoir of freakish talent, tap it sooner rather than later.  If your first paragraph is poor, it doesn’t matter how awesome your ending is because no publisher will read that far.

Finally, I’d like to draw your attention to something Simon asked Susan.  “Why hasn’t your singing career worked out so far?”  That’s similar to the question on every publisher’s mind: “do you have an audience already?” If not, why not? If you were good enough to have an audience, wouldn’t you have one already? Publishers would much rather work with an author that has already established he is good enough to draw readers.  Who would want to spend (at least) ten thousand dollars publishing a book by a completely unproven author?

The two easiest ways to build an audience are to either start a blog and/or write for some professional outlet (like a magazine or newspaper).  That will help you prove that you are worth reading and that you are already producing at a professional level.

When you’re querying your book, please do not mention that you’re thinking about a prequel.  Mentioning a prequel suggests that you don’t really know when the story starts.  It also suggests that you might leave out crucial information so that you can use it for the prequel.  Finally, I’d regard it as a warning flag that the chronology of the series will be confusing and hard to follow.  Ick.  If you’d like to discuss a prequel with your publisher, please do so after the first book has sold well.

Many authors here aren’t really sure whether they want to write a superhero novel or a comic book.  Here are a list of factors you should consider when deciding which one will work better for you.

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Earlier this month, Praxis Comics’ site had gone down for a few days and I assumed that the publisher had folded. After all, it’s a cutthroat business and their website had previously mentioned some trouble with investors.  However, I am pleased to report that the website has returned with a new design.  (I’m generally fond of Praxis’ art, but I think the design probably uses sex-appeal a bit too blatantly.  Ah well.  That’s pretty standard for this industry).

I also came across Radical Comics.  They don’t accept unsolicited submissions, so I won’t add them to our index of comic book publishers.  But I think they’re worth looking into because they have book trailers for all of their series.

So, if you’re interested in doing a trailer for your comic book (or perhaps even a novel), I think you can learn something from their approach.  Their trailers are striking because they have no narration and hardly any words; they only use wordless images and an instrumental sound-track.  That’s a surprisingly interesting way to present a simpler story like Calibre, an Arthurian legend retold in the Wild West.  It did not work for series with a more complicated setup.  For example, the premise of City of Dust is that fictional stories have been outlawed 100 years in the future.  I don’t feel like the images gave me a good idea of what was going on or why I should care.

I recommend that you look at the entire list on Bookgasm, but here are some of the highlights.

8.  The market for Iron Chef slash-fiction isn’t quite as broad as you may have assumed.  “Oh, Morimoto,” Chef Batali sighed.  “Stuff me like a pepper!”

31. There’s a fine line between writing authentic regional dialogue and making all of your characters sound like stroke victims.

32. Be thankful that they merely refused to publish it.  After all, submitting a manuscript that ends with the protagonist realizing that it was just a dream (or was it?) usually causes the publisher to edit your face with a pair of brass knuckles.

36. God may have told you to write this book, but he apparently forgot to tell you how to give it a decent ending.

47. The entire point of your book has already been more satisfactorily made in a single strip of Family Circus.

This article is an interview with Marcus Hart, the author of The Oblivion Society. He originally self-published ObSoc but was later published professionally by Permuted Press.

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I’m pitching a nonfiction book about how to write superhero stories. What do you think?

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Robert Scott has an amusing and informative horror story here.

To summarize:

• He and his artist weren’t working on the same schedule. Make sure that your artist will be to produce quickly enough to meet your deadlines.
• “Had I put more thought into it, been a responsible business person, I would have never solicited [a distributor] without all of the books being drawn.   If I had done that, I could have died and the books still could have shipped on time!”
• Planning your story ahead will help you keep production moving at a speedy clip.
• Missing deadlines screws over a long chain of people, but no one gets screwed as much as you.

Unfortunately, many literary agents are dishonest and/or incompetent.  Here are some tips to help you select an agent that knows what he’s doing.

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Good literary agents only accept manuscripts with some potential, so having a good literary agent suggests to publisher that the work is worth looking at more closely.

According to Kris Waldherr…

“Of the hundreds (maybe thousand plus) of manuscripts I read during a six month period, only about 2% went onto consideration by an acquiring editor. None of them were acquired. This suggests why so many publishers have stopped reading manuscripts not submitted to them by agents or colleagues. Bottom line: reading unsolicited submissions is simply not cost effective.”

These are some of the biggest comic book companies.  Knowing which publishers are geared towards your style of writing or art will help you decide which publishers to apply to. (Please note that I tried to stay away from publishers that do not accept unsolicited queries, like Marvel and DC Comics).

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This should be pretty obvious, but unfortunately it isn’t.  When you submit a novel manuscript or a comic book script, pick your prospective publishers carefully.  Make sure you submit it to publishers that actually work with stories that have a lot in common with your story.

1. Audience (age and gender)
2. Genre and content
3. Style/mood
4. Setting (real-world Earth vs. historical vs. the future vs. a Tolkien-like fantasy world)
5. Length, for books (length usually goes hand-in-hand with the age of the audience)
6. Art style, for comic books (dark and gritty vs. Western cartoons vs. anime/manga, for example)

Prospective publishers love it when authors put some thought into this.  If your query clearly shows that you have looked into which publishers will be the best fit for your book, you will look professional and competent.  A good place to start is looking up 5 or 10 comparable works on Amazon.  Where did they get published?  For comic books, which editors signed on?  That should give you a few publishers to look into.

I’ll use a very particular example to show how easy this is.  For example, right now I’m looking for publishers that would be interested in a guide for how to write superhero novels and comic books.  It’s aimed at teens.  Many publishers have printed books for kids that want to write, so finding apt publishers shouldn’t be a problem.  I’d also like to look at publishers that have printed guides about writing comic books.  

After 30 minutes on Amazon, I found ~10 works that seemed comparable at first glance.  Let’s look at why these works might or might not suggest that their publisher would be interested in mine…

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