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Making the call is the toughest part of submissions. We receive so many wonderful stories and only have so much time and resources to publish books. It can feel impossible to choose. Our spreadsheet helps us out here. Good note taking means that we can keep sharp memory of each submission up for consideration. Here is how we approach making decisions on submissions as an indie publisher.
Rejecting a submission
I won’t sugar coat it by inventing some new buzzword. Rejection is a central part of publishing. But it isn’t easy or fun. We take no joy in sending unfortunate news to people’s inboxes each submissions window. However, we do take sombre pride in the fact that we do not use form rejections. Authors have taken the time and made themselves vulnerable by sending their manuscripts to us for review. We believe that our response should, at the very least, show evidence that we have read and carefully considered each submission in its entirety. Even when a submission isn’t right for us, there is always something good to say about it. We recognise that a plain rejection can also leave an author floundering and lacking confidence. Where possible, we do try to include a constructive reason why it wasn’t right for us.
Making a full request
We’re back on a cheery note here! Full requests are a bubbling continuation of untapped potential. We make full requests when a manuscript is ticking all (or most) of our boxes and we’re excited to see more of it. Converse to rejection, we make sure to include a piece of constructive feedback alongside sharing what we loved about the piece. Our reason for this is two fold. First, while we make very few full requests, it is still only a step in the submissions process. We believe it is fair to authors not to lead them to believe that this is a sure sign of acceptance. A full request (in our opinion anyway) is something to be incredibly proud of. But it is our responsibility to manage expectations. Second, every book we publish sees every stage of editing. We think it is important to be transparent with our authors about expectations with developmental and line editing from the very beginning.
The acceptance emails
This is what the whole submissions process has been building to for us. We love an acceptance email. And our acceptance emails are as much a communication of our choice to team up with an author as they are an invitation for the author to team up with us! It is actually incredibly nerve wracking for us as the response we are awaiting is essentially an acceptance email of our own. Our acceptance emails do a lot of heavy-lifting. The are a celebration of the author! We get to send good news to an authors inbox. We hope it comes across as virtual party streamers when they open it up. We also think it is important to continue transparency at this point. This means we will open a discussion as to what they can expect in terms of editing, marketing, royalties and timeframes. Community is very important to us. Authors are a part of our team, not our product. We love to get in a call to chat with authors about expectations and visions. It is also, as I said before, an invitation. We are incredibly humbled by the authors who have chosen to join us on our little journey. Indie publishing with a small, albeit dedicated, team at the beginning of their adventure is not for everyone. The message of our acceptance emails is very much: we want to invite you on our journey, would you like to join us?
We hope you enjoyed the first instalment of our new Guiding Star content series. Whether you're an aspiring author, a new indie publisher, or just curious about the publishing world, come along with us as we share each step of the indie publishing process for our next cosy fantasy title. Packed with our learnings, tips and insights on editorial, design, and marketing, you’ll even have the chance to guide us in our journey as we bring our next publishing project to life.
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