Today’s entry comes from a question asked in an earlier blog post: Is it better for an author to finish a book before submitting, or do editors prefer to have a hand in creating the final work?

The short answer is, if at all possible, always finish the book first. No matter how good it is, no matter how excited you are, no matter how sure you are you’ll be finished before anyone gets back to you. Always finish it first.

Novels are very subjective, and any given publisher will have a very specific, yet completely intangible “thing” that they’re looking for in the manuscripts they receive. From character descriptions to plot devices to the climax and denouement, any publisher considering your manuscript will want to see that you’re capable of producing that “thing” they’re looking for in every page of the book. A few chapters won’t tell them enough to give your story serious consideration.

Note that many publishers will ask for only the first couple of chapters of a book in your initial submission; this does not mean that’s all they want to see. If you can do the “thing” they want in the first couple of chapters, they’re going to ask you for more, and they’re not going to want to hear that the book isn’t finished yet.

In the real world, there are only a handful of authors who can get away with writing to a publisher and saying, “I’ve got this idea for a book, and the first chapter goes something like this…” These are your top-10 bestseller authors, your Steven Kings and your Nora Robertses and your Tom Clancys. People who have written more books than can be counted on one person’s appendages, and have sold millions upon millions of them. Even if you have raw talent oozing from every pore, you are not one of these authors. You cannot get away with this.

Aside from the fact that the publishers will dismiss you as an amateur if you try to submit an unfinished novel, it’s just good practice to finish the book first. The common wisdom for any aspiring author is to, upon writing the last word of your newest masterpiece, take the entire manuscript and shut it away in a drawer for at least a month. Writing and finishing a book is a very emotional experience, and you will be too attached to your project to see it in an objective light right when you finish it. So put it away, and don’t look at it—try not to even think about it. After a month passes (or two, or six), take the manuscript out again, and read it with fresh eyes. If you still love the book as much as you did when you wrote it, then start submitting it to publishing houses. If not, start editing it until you do.

Now this is all fine and dandy for novels, but nonfiction and comics are a little different.

It’s actually fairly common for nonfiction books to be sold to publishers before they’re finished (or even started, in some cases!). Histories and how-tos are more objective works; they’re more about the knowledge and facts at the author’s disposal then about crafting a captivating universe word by painstakingly chosen word. Nonfiction books are often sold based on proposals that include the subject of the book along with the author’s resume and previous writing credits, and a small sample of the book’s contents.

Then again, if you’re trying to publish a how-to book, and you’ve never written a how-to book before, it’s probably best to finish the book first. The less experience you have, the more likely the publisher is to want to see the entire book before considering your proposal.

Comics, on the other hand, are almost always pitched and sold before they’re completed. A well-done comic will usually require the talents of several people working together to see completion—very few people are multi-talented enough to write an engaging script, pencil gorgeous layouts, add personality and warmth to the art while inking, apply screentones or colors appropriate to the scene and mood, and letter the pages so seamlessly that the reader almost doesn’t notice the words are there. (A few people are capable of all that, but I’m pretty convinced that they’re some sort of space robots anyway.) If publishers required that large groups of artists worked together like that for so long with no promise of pay or publication, there would be no such thing as comics, because half the team would have gone off to pursue lucrative careers in advertising instead.

Large publishers will often assemble a comic-making team themselves (Marvel and DC and the like usually do it this way), so each person is chosen based on their submission for that role—the writer will submit a completed script, the penciler will submit penciled pages from other projects, the inker will show past work or ink test pages, and so on. Smaller publishers (such as Iris Print) usually prefer that the teams come pre-assembled, and the comic pitch will include, at minimum, summaries of the story, characters, and setting; character designs for the main characters; and a few completed pages of the comic.

Of course, that’s not so say that it wouldn’t be a good idea to finish a comic before submitting it to a publisher—in fact, publishers love that! But it’s just not practical in most situations, so they make do with looking at pitches and past works instead.

I hope this has been somewhat informative. Next week, I’d like to talk a little bit more about the submissions process—how it works, what to do, what not to do, where to send the bribes…(just kidding on that last one…mostly!) If you have any specific questions, please let me know, and I’ll try to answer them in comments or in another entry.