I have a problem that’s been keeping me awake at night; it’s called formatting.
For weeks, I’ve been researching, Googling, asking friends, basically bugging everyone I come across with this one question:
- How can I e-mail ten pages of my manuscript into the body of my G-mail account, within messing up the formatting?
Am I the only person with this problem? Not according to my Google searches.
For those of you who say, “Send it as an attachment,” the answer is “NO.”
Agents won’t open attachments.
Then there’s the copy and paste from Word into G-mail. Well, that doesn’t work, because manuscripts need:
- double-spacing
- one inch margins all around
- Times new Roman 12-point
- italics, for inner thoughts
- indent first line of paragraph
And guess what happens. All formatting gets messed up when you copy and paste, and then try sending it to yourself and various friends, as a test, and it looks like you’ve had too much to drink.
So I’ve tried to copy and paste into Notepad, which eliminates the hidden codes, and then copy and paste that back into my G-mail, and guess what? I cannot get it double-spaced, I cannot get Times new Roman, and I cannot get the first paragraph indented.
Now if we’re talking a one-page Query letter, that’s not a problem, but imagine a ten or twenty-page manuscript sample! First, it doesn’t look professional, and second, it takes forever.
You might suggest I e-mail straight from Word through Outlook, but quite frankly, I cannot seem to get Outlook to work, since I’ve been using G-mail for all my e-mails. Would using Outlook guarantee the agent receives my twenty pages in the correct format, just like an attachment or a pdf? That’s my question.
If you’re an agent or an editor, I’d love to hear if formatting issues via e-mail are common, and perhaps a reason to instantly reject an e-mail submission. If so, how can writers submitting to you overcome this problem? Can we write two e-mails and put the Query letter in the first, and the requested ten pages, synopsis and bio in the second e-mail as an attachment? That would eliminate formatting problems.
I downloaded Diane O’Connell’s Free E-Book, which I highly recommend called: 50 Ways to Avoid the Rejection Pile. Diane used to work as an editor for Random House and now works as an independent editor and publishing consultant.
I am open to suggestions and solutions. Have you had these problems?
could you put the querie and the sample pages into a blog post and send them the link?
It's not the same as an attachment and you would have the opportunity to explain your dilemma. Might even get their sympathy and an attaboy for ingenuity. worth a shot?
That's all I could think of.
xob
I have no idea, is my brief answer.
I love that shot of you though!
@Barbara
I like that idea, but somehow I don't think an agent would. I wish I could get some to come over and help us though.
@Ladyfi
So I'm not the only one who doesn't know.
First — thanks for the shout out about my free e-book!
Now, onto your formatting problem. I'm not familiar with g-mail, but here are two things I would try:
1. Save your manuscript as an rtf (rich text format) file and then try copying and pasting into the email message. RTF preserves the formatting of the document (supposedly).
2. Look to see if Gmail has an html function that you can turn on. If it does, that'll solve all your formatting problems. Just be sure to turn it on before you compose your message.
Let me know if either of these ideas works out.
Cheers!
Sonia:
You're submitting manuscript pages along with your query? I've not heard of that, but I live in the non-fiction world where you have to have the door opened by an agent with your query. They then ask you to send them stuff (for non-fiction, a book proposal) and you can include it as an attachment at that point because they know who you are.
I'm guessing maybe it's different for fiction. The agents want the query and the first 10 pages??? If this is the case, have you ever used Outlook to send/receive emails? I use a gmail address, but everything goes through Outlook (all of my email address are routed there). I just copied & pasted 3 pages from my proposal into the body of an email and all formatting held. Indents, bullets, double spacing etc. (I wouldn't worry about the 1 inch margin, that's for a Word doc, not an email).
See if that works for you!
Kathy
@Diane
So good to see you and I'm off to try what you recommended. Thanks so much.
@Kathy
Yes, the agent's website asks for ten pages, a query, a synopsis and bio. This is also for travel/adventure/family memoirs.
@Diane
Saving as .rtf worked, as well as the formatting when copied and pasted into my G-mail. I then e-mailed it to myself and all the formatting was messed up again after I opened the e-mail. So I assume this is how the agent would see it, or perhaps I'm wrong.
Don't have that problem, but I also don't use gmail.
Can be problematic, if they forward it when it's not in attachment, it'll still mess with the formatting.
Wish I could be of help but I've never had this problem – in the sense that the last agents who asked to see my work asked for the first 50 pages, and I sent them as an attachment. So I'm interested to see what you finally come up with, and glad to see that you're sending pages to agents.
If the agent refuses attachments, send the text pasted into the e-mail and let him/her do the formatting. Stupid idea to not allow attachment.
As an editor who worked with agents, I think Desiree has the best idea. It's impossible to make text look like a professionally formatted and presented presentation in the body of an email, so I assume that all the submissions they receive will look the same – just plain text. I'm sure if they're interested and want to take it further they'll ask for an attachment, a disk or a hard copy.
Maybe the nitpicking agents are one of the reason that self-published e-books are becoming so popular!
Too bad form takes precedence over substance.
Try the attachment or create a webpage and send him link to that page.
I have no practical advice, but I do LOVE THE PIC! Makes me glad to know I am not the only one pulling out my hair these days! 🙂
GOOD LUCK!
so many frustrations now that queries have moved from snail mail to email — i look forward to a future post if you get a response from an agent or editor with answers…..