For a $99 fee, the bibliographic company Bowker will submit your manuscript to publishers through the new Bowker Manuscript Submissions feature.
Unagented authors can upload their manuscripts onto Bowker’s online database. From there, agents and editors looking to acquire can quickly scan the available submissions and focus on the manuscripts that pique their interest. Bowker specializes in bibliographic tools like ISBNs, barcodes, and data services, but now the company is expanding.
What do you think about this new service? The press release explains: “BowkerManuscriptSubmissions.com is patterned after the highly successful ChristianManuscriptSubmissions.com (CMS) managed by and in cooperation with the Christian publishers association, ECPA. The CMS service which has been in operation for nearly 10 years has proven to be a successful process for both authors and publishers. It provides authors a significantly more cost-efficient manner for submitting a manuscript to multiple publishers, while editors gain electronic tools to quickly, effectively sift many submissions based on the specific search criteria.”