Why is an outline required for novels?

There’s a good reason Creative Byline requires writers to include an outline as part of the submission package. While we were in the development stage of Creative Byline, editors told us they would prefer to know the manuscript is completed, but because a chapter-by-chapter outline shows the writer has thought through the entire story, an [...]

Outsiders’ #1 question

When we tell people outside of publishing about how Creative Byline uses software to match up manuscripts and editors, they invariably ask, “You mean something like that doesn’t already exist?” To them, using technology in this way is a no-brainer.
While there is a market for manuscripts, until now, there hasn’t been a marketplace. There hasn’t been a centralized place–real or [...]

Publishing industry research

We spent about two years researching the industry. We wanted a thorough understanding of the traditional (paper) submission process so we could come up with an electronic process that satisfies everyone’s needs. Here are a few of the things we learned.

Publishers say they are able to discard 80 – 85% of unsolicited manuscripts within a [...]

The guy behind the idea

Creative Byline founder and CEO Brad MacLean didn’t exactly dream of working in publishing. He got an engineering degree from University of Michigan but has never held an engineering job. (“It taught me a way of thinking and approaching problems,” he says, when asked why he bothered.) He worked in the computer industry for awhile [...]

How it all began: Creative Byline

Here’s how Creative Byline began: Somebody whined.
That’s right—somebody complained about how outdated the manuscript submission process was. Brad MacLean listened patiently and with great empathy to the rant, at first only because said whiner was his wife.
But the longer he listened, the more interested Brad, a former executive at one of America’s most admired companies [...]