Save a tree–and money!–April 25 - May 2

Did you know each ream of paper used requires about 6 percent of a tree? While we believe it’s worthwhile to produce books, when technology can minimize the natural resources we use in the submission process, as is the case with Creative Byline, it just makes sense to use that technology.
That’s why, in celebration of [...]

Fast facts: What you told us

Based on our poll results, the biggest gripe writers have about the old, paper submission process is “interminable response times” (60%), followed by “rejections that don’t give useful feedback” (23%). What do editors most dislike about the old process? “Having to slog through 100 manuscripts. . .before finding one that shows promise” (35%),  “Feeling perpetually [...]

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 [...]

Welcome, Tor Forge!

Tor Forge, the largest publisher of science fiction and fantasy in the world, is the latest publisher to sign up for Creative Byline. Earlier this week, we trained more than 35 editors at St. Martin’s and Tor Forge and some are already able to accept submissions through Creative Byline. Others will be doing so soon.
Our [...]

On shortcuts

Someone on a discussion board referred to Creative Byline as a “shortcut” in a derogatory way. The definition of shortcut is “a method, procedure, policy, etc., that reduces the time or energy needed to accomplish something.” So yes, Creative Byline is a shortcut—in the same way that a washing machine is a shortcut to washing [...]

We love questions!

There’ve been some questions popping up on various discussion boards that we want to answer here.
If Creative Byline is in beta, can I trust it?  Yes! Beta means different things to different people. To us, it means that the site is fully functional but you might occasionally find a broken link or think of a [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

All about first readers

Someone recently asked us who our first readers are.  Eighty percent of first readers have some type of advance writing or literature degree. They work at the direction of Creative Byline’s editorial director using specific criteria, which we’ll talk more about in a later post. We’ll supplement those readers with readers who have specialties. Most large [...]

The beauty of Creative Byline for editors

It’s audacious of us to think we can change the submission process—or it would be, if we hadn’t done our homework. But we have. And we know that editors really do want to receive manuscripts, but only certain kinds of manuscripts, i.e., the ones they happen to be looking for at the moment. So we [...]