how often do book company's ask for a manuscript after reading a query?

First of all...tell your friend congratulations and let her bask in this a little while.

Once she comes down from the sky, have an earnest talk with her about doing her homework before she signs anything the publisher has asked for.

Some things to note:

1. Is the publisher a vanity publisher (i.e. are they going to ask her to pay to have her book published)? If yes, she may want to back away from the whole thing as this can be quite costly and is not actually counted as a real publishing credit.

2. Is the publisher an e-publisher? If so, there's no harm in sending them her manuscript. E-books are taking a larger share in the book selling market because of ease of buying and downloading and storing. Having an e-book could lead to something else down the road.

3. Is it a traditional publisher (small independent)? Large publishing houses generally do not accept unagented work, but small and independent ones do. If so, send in the manuscript. You never know what will come of it.

Always be cautious. Writers are not supposed to pay for reading, editing, or publishing. Money flows toward a writer, not away from her!

If a contract is offered, always have an attorney review it to protect the writer's rights.

Not every request for a manuscript results in publication, so tell her not to be too disappointed if she gets rejected. Tell her if that happens to just try again with another place.

Best wishes to her in her career!

It depends on the publisher. If it's a REAL publisher (Random House, Penguin, Simon & Schuster, etc) then that's a big accomplishment. But I doubt it's a real publisher since you mention she sent the query directly to the publisher and not through an agent. The big publishers don't take unagented work. So I'm guessing this is a small publisher, an online publisher, or a vanity press (authorhouse, publishamerica, etc)...in which case it's not an accomplishment. They take everything.

If this is a brick and mortar publisher (a paper book publisher) it is infrequent. They receive hundreds, if not thousands of queries per month and the percentage of those getting the go-ahead to send in the ms is quite small. Typically less than ten percent.

If it is an epublisher, the odds of having a positive response to a query are somewhat higher but, even there, the odds are small. Being published, except for self-publishing venues (vanity presses, etc.), is never easy.

Sounds like your friend struck it lucky, but the ms must still get past the proofreader(s) and submissions editor(s). The odds for mss are just as low, if not lower.

Best of luck to your friend -- whatever the venue.

J.

http://www.jrichardjacobs.net/

"The speed of the brain is inversely proportional to the speed of the mouth squared."

He's probably right, especially if he's familiar with your writing. I'm also assuming that he won't be paying to have it self-published. The teen writers whose parents self-published them ended up getting some scathing reviews from readers who were like "this book was a waste of time and should have never been published." "This author can't write worth crap and no one should be reading this." "This person proves that young people shouldn't have their ego stroked by their parents because this girl can't even pass a 4th grade English test because the grammar and spelling is horrible." and even "this book has no plot and it doesn't make sense. Whoever published this book should be ashamed of themselves." If you can deal with mean comments regarding your writing and your work then maybe you can convince your dad to publish you. No one will put you on a pedestal because you wrote a book at a young age. If anything, everyone will hold you to the same standards that adults have to meet, and if you write a book badly then they're going to tell you, and they're not going to be nice about it. People your age rarely write on the professional level needed for publishing. This is why most writers are over 30 - they need to develop their skill and this takes several years. Very, very few people can say they published a book as a teen. It's extremely rare. Christopher Palioni lucked out but he is still the exception. Chances of you or anyone else being the next Palioni is rare. Plus, Palioni self-published his book and his parents put a lot of money into marketing it and they even went to schools to promote his book, so they put a lot of time, money and effort into his book. Can your parents do the same? On top of that, his book probably wasn't badly written crap, which is, unfortunately, what most teens write today. So, like someone else said, just because you write a novel or story does not mean it should be published. Real publishers will not publish crap. So your book has to be well-written and your plots and characters have to be well-developed. Your a teen, but your writing is going to be judged by professional adult standards and if you can't meet those standards then you have no business being published. GL with your writing.