From Idea to Print: Part One
If you’ve seen this post, you know that I am in the very beginning stages of getting an adventure published. I have been asked by the company to give them more information and, hopefully, they will want to see this through. If not, it’s still exciting to not be rejected outright. Anyway, I thought it would be useful to those who are looking to submit ideas to write a series of articles related to the process.
You have an idea. Now what?
The idea for this adventure actually came to me in the shower where, really, most of my best ideas come to me because I have nothing to do in there but think. After I was out of the shower, the idea kept stewing and I wrote it down. My wife and I had been discussing RPGs earlier and she encouraged me to submit ideas for publishing. I decided to take a chance with this one and looked up the submission guidelines to a well known RPG publisher. I also did a bit of research as far as what companies were looking for.
Follow the directions.
Every publisher that accepts submissions has guidelines that must be followed. I looked at the guideliness and made sure I followed them to the letter. I’ve met a few publishers before and asked them how they determine who to follow up with. There are always two criteria. First, they must follow the submission guidelines and, two, their idea must be compelling. Notice the “idea must be compelling” criteria is not first. There’s a reason for that. Publishers get subsmissions frequently. If a submitter can’t be bothered to follow the guidelines, why should the publisher believe that they are going to be able to meet deadlines or follow any instructions as far as layout and context?
Be patient.
As I’ve previously stated, publishers receive many submissions. They have to weed out a lot of stuff they don’t care about and will eventually get to your ideas. So don’t be surprised that you will be waiting a while to hear back from them. Don’t send e-mails to them asking if they’ve looked at your idea yet. Just be patient and wait for a reply from them, positive or negative.
That’s it for now. As the process continues, if the process continues, I will give my advice on what to expect and what you can do to best increase your chances for publication. So until next time, wish me luck!
I’m very happy for you! Someday I think I might like to write an adventure or something along these lines myself, so watching you succeed is inspiring. ^^
reveal September 14th, 2008 at 9:53 AM
@Erica – Thanks! At this point, I’ve just got my foot in the door, so I would call myself “successful” just yet. But we’ll see!