How to use this Page

Today, The Muffin welcomes Wolf Hoelscher, owner of a new company to help writers and editors connect called Pubmission. We interviewed Wolf to find out all the ins and outs of Pubmission--a website designed to make the process of submitting manuscripts easier for both writers and publishers.

WOW: Welcome, Wolf, thanks for taking the time to chat with us today. What is the purpose of Pubmission?

Wolf: The purpose is simply to make the submission process easier for both publishing professionals and writers. Just as Monster.com or CareerBuilder attempts to connect job seekers with employers, Pubmission’s goal is to serve as a central hub for submissions that helps writers and publishers find each other in a simple, less intimidating way. From a writer’s perspective, it takes a long time to hunt through the listing manuals to find the right publisher. On Pubmission, writers can see which subscribing publishers match up with them best. And then they can go ahead and submit to them directly through the site.

There’s been a lot of talk about the death of the slush pile now that e-books and self-publishing are moving to the forefront of the industry. I don’t believe it has to be that way. As a writer myself, I know that it feels like you’re playing the lottery when you submit your work. It’s frustrating and daunting. But traditional publishers and agents still have a lot to offer writers, particularly in terms of editing and marketing. The slush pile isn’t dead; it’s just that the system is cumbersome and time-consuming. Pubmission attempts to rectify that.

WOW: What a great idea--anything to make the process of submitting our work easier is genius! How can writers benefit by using Pubmission?

Wolf: First, let me say that we try to make very clear to writers that Pubmission does not guarantee publication. If your writing isn’t fantastic, polished, and marketable, your chances of finding a publisher are slim. As a writer myself, I know that submitting your work can feel like buying a lottery ticket. But in this Internet age, there are tools out there that can help you prepare and market your submission in ways we never thought possible before. Pubmission is one of those tools.

We try to help writers with their homework. Slush pile editors are often frustrated because many of the writers who submit to them aren’t familiar with their publication and send them inappropriate work. But on Pubmission, not only do we list the guidelines and company info for each publisher, we also show writers which publishers have needs that pair up with the genre and tags associated with each submission.

So as a writer, you can send your submission directly to the publishers you like, and you can submit it to the General Database [on Pubmission], where any subscribing publisher has the ability to search for it.

There are also things you can do to improve your submission’s visibility. Editor Ratings not only show publishers a star rating based on an editor’s appraisal of its saleability, but each comes with a short critique that can give a writer an unbiased second opinion. We’re also adding a page that will show you how your rating matches up with other submission ratings on the site per