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Hi, Chloe,

Thanks for posting. You seem to be a very dedicated writer!

How did I get my first book out there? I asked my Mom to type it in manuscript form — 8-1/2″x11″ white paper, double-spaced, one side of the page only. Then I sent it with a covering letter to Scholastic’s Canadian office in Toronto where I was living at the time. How did I come to choose Scholastic? Hey, I was the class monitor for the Arrow Book Clubs — and they were the only publisher I knew!

That’s it. The whole story of the big beginning. They liked my book, published it, and I was a bestselling author in short order. I’ve been writing ever since, and I still publish with Scholastic. That was 106 books ago!

And that’s how I “got it out there.” I recommend that you go to the library for a book on writers’ markets. It will list all the publishers and the kinds of works they are looking for. I don’t know if there are houses that will even read manuscripts that don’t come to them through a literary agent, but you can certainly try. I got lucky, and there’s no reason it can’t happen for you too.

Neatness counts, so does grammar. And length really does matter.

Good luck!                                                                                               —–Gordon Korman—–