Submissions

Book Length

Submissions

Prospective Press is NOT accepting book length manuscripts at this time.

Submitted manuscripts must be original and unpublished. Desirable manuscript lengths are 65k to 100k-words for adult fiction, 60k to 85k for young adult, 45k to 70k for mid-grade, and typically no more than 40k for elementary school age. Pre-reader and Early Reader works are evaluated on a case-by-case basis, but should be of reasonable length.

We are now considering serialized, novella-length fiction. Each installment should have a planned length of between 25k and 40k words.

Read the entire Instructions section below and follow the directions exactly before submitting.

Instructions for prospective Prospective Press authors

READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY. Incorrectly formatted submissions WILL NOT BE READ!

The subject line should be formatted as such: Query for (genre) manuscript (MS title) by (author) for(target age), (word count) words.

Submissions should be contained exclusively within the body of the e-mail message. DO NOT ATTACH FILES, they will not be opened. DO NOT EMBED links, they will not be followed. Query should consist of:

1) salutation, author(s) name, tentative title, word count, prior publication record, and relevant contact information;

2) query letter section—neatness and form count—containing a short summary and a long summary; and

3) the first 5,000-words, no more or less, of the story (or up to 5,000 for shorter works) embedded in the body of the message.

Allow up to six weeks for a response to unsolicited submissions and four weeks for solicited submissions. Multiple concurrent submissions to the press may be made so long as only one manuscript is included in each query. You must inform us if you are concurrently submitting your manuscript to other publishers; failure to do so will negatively impact current and future submissions.

We read a cross section of genre fiction—in all age ranges: Elementary, Mid-grade, Young Adult, and Adult—and some non-fiction.

We DO NOT accept poetry (please see Press 53), erotica, clichéd romance, pornography, mysticism, devotionals, miracle diet books, memoirs, biographies, fan fiction, horror porn, or political screeds.

Anthologies

We are recruiting short stories for the following anthologies. The subject line should be formatted as such:

Query for (MS title) by (author) (word count) words.

Submissions should be contained exclusively within the body of the e-mail message. DO NOT ATTACH FILES, they will not be opened. DO NOT EMBED links, they will not be followed. Query should consist of:

1) salutation, author(s) name, tentative title, word count, prior publication record, and relevant contact information;

2) query letter section—neatness and form count—containing a short summary and a long summary; and

3) the entire story embedded in the body of the message.

Due to the volume of queries we receive, we cannot extend regrets to each individually; if you have not heard back within six weeks, please assume that we are not interested.

Please don't send us previously printed stories.

We are currently requesting Gothic Horror short stories for Off the Beaten Path 4.

Story length from flash fiction to novelette.

Submit to off.the.beaten.path (at)
prospectivepress (dot) com

Note: all royalties and compensations are processed electronically. We do not issue paper checks.