Submissions

Submitting a Proposal
We’re not open to unsolicited proposals at this time. If you’re a budding author and want to get more advice on your work we recommend you check out the amazing on-line novel-in-progress review machine that is Authonomy!

If you have an agent, or you are personally known to us or recommended to us by someone we know, you are welcome to submit proposals for new novels. We require a brief (two pages max) summary of characters, plot and your intentions/inspiration, in that order — plus the opening five chapters.

This should be emailed to us, either as Word, RTF or PDF files, or in the body of an email (though we prefer RTFs). Please don’t just send us a complete manuscript without a proposal. Please note that we do not accept hardcopy manuscripts or proposals – indeed, we are not always able to respond to written submissions.

If we like what we read, we will then ask for a full plot breakdown, or a read of the whole finished manuscript.

What We’re Looking For
We’re publishing novels, either standalone or as part of greater series. We’re not looking to publish novellas, short stories or non-fiction at this time.

All our books are “genre” fiction in one way or another — specifically fantasy, science fiction, horror, and that new catch-all urban or modern fantasy. Those are quite wide-ranging in themselves; we’re looking for all types of sub-genre, so for example, hard SF, space opera, cyberpunk, military SF, alternate future history, future crime, time travel, and more. We have no problem if your book mashes together two or more of these genres; in fact, we practically insist upon it.

We’re publishing books for adults. Although we sometimes use the phrase “post-YA” to describe AR titles, we are not looking for any specifically junior, YA or teenage titles to publish. All our books cover adult themes, situations and “language”, and our protagonists are adults.

Our books will be published in all English-language territories — notably the UK, US and Australia — so we’ll be buying rights to cover all those. If you are only offering rights in one territory, we will not be able to deal with you. We will be able to offer e-book and audio versions as standard too, plus limited edition and multiple physical formats where appropriatel. We are not contracting any work-for-hire titles; we offer advances and royalties.

Beyond all of this, what we’re really looking for in your writing is this:
• A “voice”, that comes from…
• Confident writing
• Pacy writing
• Characters that live, have real relationships and emotions, even in extreme situations
• A sense of vision, a rounded universe that lives and breathes
• Clever construction, good plotting, a couple of surprises even for us jaded old read-it-alls
• Heightened experience – an intensity, extremity or just a way of treating plot or situation in a way we’ve not come across before. “Goes up to 11″, if you know what that means.

Do all those, and it will be almost irrelevant that your story is one or other sub-set of SF, fantasy or horror!

Got any further questions? Contact us.

Art Submissions
Please just send us contact details and a URL for an online portfolio. We have a lot of artists in our Rolodex already, but we’re always happy to consider adding you to our roster for colour covers or greyscale illustrated maps. When we have your details, we’ll decide on who to approach for a cover on a book-by-book or series basis. You should have no need to poke us again