Send Us Your Work

1. Please ensure that you have read the About ALM page in its entirety.
2. Please send us a sample of your work as an attachment to an email. Please send a synopsis of one or two pages, and a sample chapter or chapters of up to fifty pages. Please note: if possible, format your work as Rich Text Format (any word processor can “Save As” RTF).
3. Line spacing: the pages should have double-spaced lines of type, or one-and-a-half spaced lines, to make the pages easier to read. We do not accept single-spaced work. Most publishers have these same preferences. ‘Spacing’ here means spacing between the lines of type, not spacing between the words or letters. Please refer to the sample page below as a rough guide.
4. Make sure that every item you send is clearly labelled with your name and address. With a manuscript, you do not need to put your name and address on every page: just on the front page. Please number all the pages, and include your name and the title of the work on all the pages. Your word processor makes this easy to do by inserting an automatic Header, and / or an automatic Footer, on every page. This can easily include a page number et cetera.
5. You must let us know in your covering letter if any publishers or agents have seen any versions of the work. We cannot ask a publisher to look at your work, if they have already read it and rejected it. With publishers, you only get one chance to impress them, so get an agent before you approach any publishers, not afterwards, when it may be too late.
6. We need to be sure that attachments we might open are not from spammers or worse. You can help us by including a plain email covering letter explaining briefly who you are and what your work is about.
7. Important: Please also cut and paste the following paragraph into your email, right at the top:

Below is a sample page from a hypothetical typescript which a writer might submit to an agent or publisher. It is meant to give a general idea of the kind of page layout that agents and publishers like.
Please note:

1. the plain and readable typeface,
2. the lack of hyphens (hint: turn off “Hyphenation”),
3. the flush-left or left-justified type (hint: turn off “Justification”),
4. the generous margins,
5. the generous line-spacing, and
6. the helpful information in the Header.

The URL address of this page is http://austlit.com/send-us-your-work.html