How is the manuscript sorted?

Each novel presented in a book fair was first a manuscript, which was selected by a publisher. It takes talent, and maybe a little luck, to get there: Quebec publishers receive hundreds of texts a year. Who does the sorting? What makes a manuscript end up in the pile of those that stand out?

Alexandre Vigneault
Press

“I had the feeling that I was throwing a bottle into the sea,” recalls Catherine Leroux. About ten years ago she did like hundreds of other authors who dream of being published: she sent her first manuscript to five or six publishing houses. By mail and email.

“I remembered an editor who came to speak to my group at CEGEP. He said that it was impossible for a good text not to be noticed by at least one publisher in Quebec, she says. I chose to believe this statement and take the risk. ”

Antoine Tanguay, from Maison Alto, spotted his manuscript among the hundreds he receives each year.

He was not the only one: Catherine Leroux already had another positive response. She chose Alto, who published Walking in the forest in 2012 and three other novels of his pen thereafter.

The challenge of managing manuscripts

The alliance between Alto and Catherine Leroux was not limited to that. For several years, the author was responsible for the first sorting of manuscripts at the Quebec publishing house. That’s no small task: she estimated that, to read them all, Alto would need to hire no less than three full-time people! Nobody, neither there nor with other publishers, devotes all his time to it.

“Managing manuscripts is a constantly renewed challenge,” confirms Marie-Noëlle Gagnon, editor at Québec Amérique. It is also a delicate job that none of the publishing houses joined by Press does not delegate to external readers: it is done by editors or authors who publish with them. “This work is really part of the soul of the house”, judges Jean Bernier, publishing director at Boréal.

Publishers say they receive between 400 and 800 manuscripts each year. “We open all the envelopes, we read all the cover letters”, assures Jean Bernier. However, a large part of the entries were rejected out of hand, because they did not correspond to the mission of this or that publishing house: Alto, Boréal and Québec Amérique do not publish theater or poetry, for example.

What remains – and there is a lot left – is not read from the first to the last page. Most “early readers” read between 10 and 30 before deciding whether or not to continue. If there’s a little sparkle, they’ll read a bit in the middle and towards the end.

“There are a lot of novels that start off in a dazzling way, and then the balloon deflates,” notes Marie-Noëlle Gagnon.

“A text that is not well written is not well written from the start,” she said again. After ten pages, it’s settled. “The reverse is also true:” We see it immediately when someone has a voice, a feather, “assures Catherine Leroux.

Find the pearls

What is this famous literary “voice”? “There is no real criterion. We are just asking for nice surprises, says Catherine Ostiguy, head of first sorting at Éditions du Boréal. We are looking for a distinctive way in the author to say what he wants to express. ”

A good manuscript is certainly not a “well-written” text without spelling mistakes.

The word that comes up with Alto is “astonishment”. “If I read something which, from the first pages, surprises and amazes me, if I do not have the impression of having read that elsewhere, it will hook me,” explains Catherine Leroux. It doesn’t have to be big window dressing, sometimes it’s in the detail. ”

Conversely, there are some missteps that should not be made. Marie-Noëlle Gagnon evokes the dozens of manuscripts sent by young retirees who finally realize their dream of writing and offer a story inspired by that of their family… “You shouldn’t start your novel with a description of the weather,” says Jean. Bernier. I say it in jest, but bad manuscripts often start with half a page of weather. ”

The process is ruthless, agree the editors. However, it is necessary. “Even books for which we have crushes do not manage to find their way, underlines Marie-Noëlle Gagnon. You can’t afford to publish books that you don’t have. ”

Of the hundreds of manuscripts received by email or post, the editors eventually publish one or two a year. Up to four at Québec Amérique, the good years. It’s not much, but it’s already a lot for a house to launch two new authors per year, according to Jean Bernier.

And even if there are few elected, Antoine Tanguay ensures that it is worth trying his luck. “The process is completely flawed,” he admits, “but it is the only one that is viable. ”