The die is cast

[igenlode]

Well, I've done it; I've sent off my first 'query'. After a last-minute panic over exactly what people mean when they say 'the first 25 pages'; it turns out that they mean 'the first 25 pages when formatted as an A4 page in Microsoft Word in Times New Roman with one-inch margins', and as I don't have Microsoft Word or Times New Roman on my system and my manuscript is formatted to paperback book size and margins so that I could print and bind it for my own sample copy, that means that the 25 pages I had carefully exported and reformatted to be email-safe, one chapter at a time, were actually a considerably shorter extract than expected :-(
(If they gave a word count for their sample passage it would make life much easier.)

I went back and added in the rest of the scene that I had previously truncated in order to meet the page count. I couldn't be bothered to go through and change all the page templates for every chapter (the program the manuscript is currently in for printing purposes is not a DTP system that I know at all well, and doing so would be a non-trivial matter), so I don't know how far short it still is. Basically, they are looking for a demonstration of your ability to write, and possibly to structure your work, and I *think* that what I've got is a reasonable representative sample from that point of view. Putting a little bit more wouldn't significantly improve it.

If people start requiring me to submit in Microsoft Word Docx format, that is going to be another future problem; I can *import* and convert Word documents (but not in this DTP software!) but cannot generate them...

Comments

[fred_mouse]

In case it is useful information: I write most of my documents in RStudio using Quarto, and can produce Word documents as one of the options. Both of these are open source; RStudio has been around for a long time, and is very robust. Quarto has been around long enough to be stable. It uses markdown as the base formatting, and can also have LaTeX. I have a set up that I can render to pdf (for my use) or word (for my supervisors) by selecting from the menu items. For me, the ability to read in data and then embed analysis results is why I started. The ability to do version control locally by setting a project up to use git means I do my document drafts in it even if they don't need data analysis.

For word documents to have a specific format, it needs a template file. Whether that is necessary for your purposes I don't know, but it takes very little time to create one if you can get short access to Word. Margins shouldn't need a template; specific font might.

Also: if you are code savvy, there are ways to get around the template aspect.

[igenlode]

Thanks, but I'm not in a position to compile 'open source' programs (and as evinced in the cases of Angband and gawk, just because the source code is nominally available, that doesn't mean it works 'out of the box' once the developer support for the port has been dropped...)

The main thing that people seem to be asking for in terms of manuscript formatting is one-inch margins (which looks *huge* to me, but presumably allows space for writing comments there?) and double line spacing, presumably for the same reason. I don't think fonts matter, except that you don't want to use a fancy font of any sort, obviously.
But so far I have been going for agents (all two of them!) who want submissions in plain text within an email rather than via Web form upload, so it's just a matter of converting all the non-ASCII characters for safety...

[fred_mouse]

RStudio installs really well with minimal tech, and is actively maintained. But I get where you are coming from. I'm intrigued that there has been a shift to plain text in email, which is much more accessible for a lot of people. Possibly the agents have also moved away from Microsoft and its predatory pricing model.