# Selling A Draft



## King Raven Stark (Dec 9, 2012)

I have been writing for years and have never settled down and wrote out a full story in detail like dialogue and such. I only focus on drafts and I want to know can you sell a rough draft?

Thanks


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## TWErvin2 (Dec 9, 2012)

King Raven Stark said:


> I have been writing for years and have never settled down and wrote out a full story in detail like dialogue and such. I only focus on drafts and I want to know can you sell a rough draft?
> 
> Thanks



Probably not.

You don't have a track record. Some authors that do have a solid sales record can sell a novel based on a synopsis and first chapter or two. But the publisher has no idea if you can and/or will follow through to complete the draft, even a solid first draft.

Ideas, great ideas, are out there a plenty, as are unfinished manuscripts. But there are also thousands of completed manuscripts submitted to agents and editors each and every day. Why would any of them decide to sign an unproven author who hasn't taken the time or had the drive to complete a project?

Just my two cents.


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## saellys (Dec 10, 2012)

If you were to sell a rough draft to a publisher, I'm not sure what would happen afterward. Are you proposing that they get someone else to write it instead of you? In that event, they would be paying you for the idea and paying someone else for the actual work of writing. That's double the investment for the same amount of risk. 

If you sold them the idea and then wrote it yourself, they'd more or less be paying you on spec, and that's not likely to happen either. You'd be better served by picking the story you like best and fleshing it out, then shopping that around to publishers--or publishing it yourself.


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## Kevin O. McLaughlin (Dec 11, 2012)

Basically, no.

Publishers turn down thousands of good, finished books every year. They take in manuscripts which still need editing; that's why they have editors. But the more work a book needs, the less likely they are to be interested.

Likewise, there are hundreds of thousands of good books published each year, so a rough book is unlikely to do well if you indie publish it.

I know some writers whose first drafts are so solid that they basically write a first draft, give it a quick proofread, then email it to a publisher. And they're published every time. They don't redraft, don't revise. The idea that you MUST revise is one based on college English classes; poor revision can actually make a work worse instead of better.

But if you feel your draft is "rough", i.e. not ready for publishing after a brief editorial going-over, then you probably need to either improve your writing skills until your first drafts are no longer rough, or learn good revision skills.


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