Publishing with usOpen for submissions
Turn your manuscriptinto something real.
We take on four to six books a year. Every one of them arrived as a document from someone who was not sure it was ready.
What we read
Novels and novellas, finished or nearly finished, from twenty thousand words up.
Poetry collections with a shape to them — a sequence, an argument, a year.
Essays and criticism, single-author collections rather than one piece.
Short stories, if the collection holds together as a book.
What we do not
Anything sent to twelve houses at once. We read slowly and would rather not waste your time or ours.
Manuscripts we are asked to pay for placement in, or that arrive with a fee attached. We never charge writers.
Work that needs a series to make sense. One book at a time.
Five stages,nine months.
Between the document you send and the book on a shelf. Nothing here is a surprise, and nothing here is skipped.
- 01
Write
Bring us a finished draft, or the part of one you trust. Every submission is read by an editor, and every submission gets an answer.
- 02
Edit
Two passes with an editor who has read your influences. Structure first, then sentences — and never the other way round.
- 03
Design
Type, cover, paper stock, binding. A book is an object before it is ever a purchase, and the object is half the argument.
- 04
Publish
Print and digital together, with an ISBN registered to you and a contract you can read without a lawyer beside you.
- 05
Reach readers
The list goes to booksellers, festival programmers, reviewers, and forty thousand readers who have come to take our word for it.
The terms, in advance
- Advances
- Modest and real: between two and eight thousand, paid half on signature and half on delivery. We would rather commit to fewer books properly.
- Royalties
- Ten per cent of the cover price on print, twenty-five on digital, paid twice a year with a statement you can actually read.
- Rights
- You keep translation, audio and screen rights unless you ask us to handle them. Nothing is bundled in by default.
- Costs
- Editing, design, typesetting, printing and publicity are ours. You are never asked to contribute to production.
Send itto us.
The first fifty pages, a short description in your own words, and a way to reach you. No synopsis template, no comparison titles, no pitch deck.
Submissions are read in the order they arrive. Eight weeks, an answer either way.
Every book on our listarrived unannounced.
Four of the six were open submissions from writers nobody had published. That is not a policy we are proud of having. It is just how the good ones tend to arrive.