Submissions

Process

Do you have a creative book project that you would like us to consider for publication? First, check and see if our publication window is open– generally April through November.

What we ask for is an email describing your project or manuscript and including a sample of approximately 20 pages. We publish poetry, short stories, novellas, novels, plays, and creative non-fiction. So tell us what you have and let your sample speak for you. If we are interested we will contact you and ask to see the full ms (doc or docx is fine). If we are not interested, we will let you know as soon as possible.

Once we express interest and receive your full manuscript, it will be given to at least two paid readers who will enjoy and carefully evaluate it. Based on their evaluations we will offer to publish it for you as it is, or with revisions, or we will decline the opportunity. We often have suggestions from our outside readers on ways to improve the work. We pass those along to you whether or not we decide to publish your work.

If we publish your book, you will not pay us anything–though if you want more than your 20 free copies you will pay wholesale price for the extras. Once your “distribution threshold” is reached, you will receive royalties.

The books, once they are uploaded and approved, become available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble within about a week. Through our distributor, Ingram Content Group, they quickly become available all around the world. Though ebooks are optional and refusing the option means a somewhat lower distribution threshold, most of our authors have been choosing to have ebooks. Nowadays ebooks come with a (computerized) text-to-speech capacity so that listening to the book is possible.

contact

If you have any questions or would like to pitch a book, just send us an email at the site email address (ndelmonico@sbcglobal.net). 

Royalties

You should know that we are a small press with a very small promotional budget. We send out 10-15 copies with press releases to various newspapers, journals, and magazines for review; we get the book into our distributor’s catalog, and maintain a web presence. But we depend on the authors to do any further PR. Several have done amazing jobs in promoting their work, organizing readings and signing events at their local libraries or bookstores, reading their works on radio shows or at other public events, getting their works reviewed in local papers or literary journals. Authors do get 20 free copies to use for promotion or to show or just give to friends.

If we publish your book, you will not pay us anything–though if you want more than your 20 free copies you will pay wholesale price for the extras. Once your “distribution threshold” is reached, you will receive royalties. (A distribution threshold is the number of books that must be sold for us to recover our publication expenses–the money we’ve paid to readers, artists, graphic designers, printer, distributor, ebook maker, etc.) Usually the threshold is about 200 books, including ebooks. Royalties start at 30% of our “publishers compensation,” but if book sales reach higher numbers (500, 1000) your royalty percentage increases (40%, 50%).

Writing

As of 6/25/23, submissions are currently open. Submission are closed for roughly half of the year on average, generally from April to November.