Paper Golem

 

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

All submissions should adhere to "standard formatting." What that means to us is:

  • 8.5" x 11" page size (we're a US-based press)
  • 1-inch margins on all sides
  • left-justification (ragged right margin)
  • 12-point Courier typeface, double-spaced
  • use underlines to indicate italics
  • a right-justified header on all but the first page
  • that header looks like this: Last Name / Title Word / #
  • author's name and contact info on the first page
  • author's byline and story title centered below that

Keep in mind that while the particulars of submission guidelines may at times seem arbitrary, they also serve as a useful shibboleth. Authors who can't be bothered to follow instructions are likely to be a source of other problems, regardless of the quality of their fiction. Guidelines allow editors to eliminate such submissions very quickly indeed.

All submissions are by email only. Attach the story to your email as an RTF file (not a TXT, DOC, or DOCX file; if you don't think this matters, see the previous point about shibboleths and reconsider).

Please include your full contact information in the body of your email, as well as a short list of recent credits. Other "cover letter" style goodies are neither requested nor required. Additional guidelines are detailed below, depending on which of our project lines you're submitting to.

Alembical

Our Alembical series produces anthologies of original novella length speculative fiction. We are always reading for this series, so you're welcome to submit at any time. In addition to the standard formatting discussed above, your submission should adhere to the following additional requirements:

Please include your full contact information in the body of your email, as well as a short list of recent credits. Other "cover letter" style goodies are neither requested nor required.

Cucurbital

We also publish short story anthologies under the series name Cucurbital. The common thread for each volume is a set of "writing prompts" or "seeds" that all the stories share. This series has a very limited reading window from May 1st to June 30th, 2012. It also has the following additional submission requirements:

Please include your full contact information in the body of your email, as well as a short list of recent credits. Other "cover letter" style goodies are neither requested nor required.

What rights do you buy?

We buy first world print rights, for publication in the English language anywhere in the world. We ask for no competing publication (i.e., you can't sell the same story somewhere else) for eighteen months, with exceptions made if your work is solicited for a "best of" anthology.

We also buy ebook rights, with that same eighteen month exclusivity. Our ebooks are released without DRM, and in addition to being sold in the usual places, are bundled as a free bonus when anyone buys the paper version of the book from our website.

All other rights remain with the author.

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