As well as your cover pic, give them a couple more. Don’t give them 75 full-res images to clog up their inbox or go hunting around on your Dropbox.


8 / Research some more


If their author guidelines disagree with Ronald T, redo everything following the author guidelines. In particular, if they indicate 2000 words, do 1800–1999 words. Above all, don’t do 2200 words. If your book, when you write it, comes in 10% over the word count, their editors will hate you. So show them you can count words.


9 / Presentation


You don’t have a degree in graphic design. Okay.


• Don’t centre your headings; align them on the left to match the text.


Make sure the images on show are all good ones


• Don’t underscore your headings. That’s horrid. Use bold.


• Do you know how to put 6pt space after your paragraphs, rather than hitting the return key twice? Then do that.


• Don’t use Times Roman, or imitation handwriting. Arial is okay.


• Run the spellchecker. 10 / Stop!


Before pressing ‘send’, visit your own website. If they’re at all interested, your website is where they’re going to go. Make it look lively and make it look like you update it rather often. Make sure the images on show are all good ones.


11 / Play Patience


After a pre-presentation quickie (Item 1), give them 10 days or a fortnight before sending a reminder. After a full book presentation, a month could be soon enough to send a reminder. Don’t sound in any way aggrieved (they’re doing you a favour by even opening your annoying email). Explain politely that if they do feel it’s not for them, you’ll appreciate being told that. And when the rejection email arrives – even patienter! Tell them you appreciate the time they spent looking over your submission, curse them out roundly for not reading it with proper attention, and tell them just how stupid, ignorant and insensitive they’re being.


Then delete the second two parts of that... But who knows, your book proposal might even get accepted.


www.ronaldturnbull.co.uk Small but perfectly formed: Helm Crag, or the blurb for your book about Lakeland


B The BLURB


12 Outdoor focus | spring 2017


K T


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