<p>I'm working with an editor at Scholastic to publish a novel. I don't have an official contract at this point, only an oral agreement, so I'm having him send to colleges a short letter explaining what we're doing (which is basically starting to edit the novel for publication). I'm wondering how to go about this. Can I just have him mail the letter over? Will it even make it into my file that way? Does anything else need to be attached? It's not really a rec, so I'm not sure the rec form would be appropriate, but I also don't know what would. Thoughts?</p>
<p>Why would you want to notify Yale with information like that when you haven't even published this book and only have an "oral contract" up till this point?? My advice would be to wait till this book gets off the ground and then perhaps notify Yale about it say if you are deferred SCEA. I say this since it's quite the accomplishment for a 17-year old and Yale adcoms would be awfully skeptical as they would if another student said he/she was about to have research published in Nature, the nation's premiere science magazine.</p>
<p>I understand they might be skeptical, which is why I asked him to write the letter for me, explaining that there is intent to publish. It seems counterintuitive to me to assume they're not going to believe me so i shouldn't try to provide evidence. no offense, but i find that kind of ridiculous.</p>
<p>No, what he's saying makes sense if you literally only have an oral agreement.</p>
<p>If you get something in writing, it's another story.</p>
<p>I agree .</p>
<p>wait, i really don't mean to be rude, i just still don't quite understand.
If i have an oral agreement, don't i need something like a letter from the editor saying "hey, we intend to publish this; we just haven't gotten very far yet" to make it legit. otherwise it's just this random unverified thing on my resume.</p>
<p>also, maybe it'll help if i explain the situation here. i won the national novel writing award at the scholastic art and writing awards and the prize for that award is to have your novel published by scholastic. they have published the winners from all of the past years. so it is a real and serious thing and i do want yale to know about it. so if you guys think the letter is a bad idea how do you recommend telling them instead?</p>
<p>Well, the fact that you've already written down Scholastic winner on the application should do the trick, since Yale of all places will know enough about the competition to know what happens next in the process. It's not a separate award by yourself because ALL Scholastic winners get their novels/poems/etc. published from what you said.</p>
<p>no, all scholastic winners are not published. and in any event, i'm not talking about the anthology scholastic puts out of some of its winners. i'm talking about a separate book publication deal. it's attached to the competition, but it's not necessarily something that adcoms would immediately recognize since it's only in this one category (novel writing) that they do this.</p>
<p>Firstly, congrats on the award!</p>
<p>A letter from Scholastic confirming their intent to publish your work will have little more effect than you saying so yourself. If they really have any doubts (which they shouldn't considering the prestige of your award), they will contact you or Scholastic. Once you have a written agreement, send that to Yale ASAP.</p>
<p>i probably shouldn't be here since i'm a stanford undergrad, but i got accepted to yale two years ago and thought maybe i could give some advice. </p>
<p>first of all, winning a national novel writing award is in itself a great achievement that will be recognized by the adcoms. in your resume you should explain (for reference) the standard procedure after winning the prize (that the winning novels are published and yours will be too). </p>
<p>i advise you not to have the editor send a letter. since the purpose of the letter is to explain the "oral agreement", it isn't a recommendation letter, and therefore shouldn't be submitted. UNTIL/UNLESS you receive notification from the adcoms that they would like to see some written agreement (hence proof of the novel publishing)</p>
<p>i'm afraid to tell you, though, that "having a book published" and "going to be publishing a book" is all the difference in the world. every applicant can say that he "will be" publishing a book soon, but not every applicant can say he actually did unless he did. In that sense, a letter from the publisher/editor is practically useless.</p>
<p>fair enough. thank you for the advice everyone. I think i understand where you're coming from now.</p>