Submissions
Foolscap & Quill will begin accepting submissions for new publications on October 1, 2011.
How to Submit:
Please submit a one page query by e-mail to: submissions@foolscap-quill.com, include the title, the length, the genre and a brief synopsis.
Requirements:
- Please submit a query only after you complete your work.
- Queries, samples and manuscripts should be carefully proofread before you submit them. It is very difficult to proof your own work. You keep seeing what you mean to write rather than what you actually typed.
Spell-checking software catches some things and misses others. Find a friend who is willing to read it over to check for errors if you cannot afford a professional proofreader. If you do not respect you work enough
to give it the best presentation, why should anyone else?
How Foolscap & Quill Works:
Foolscap & Quill is not a "vanity" publisher. You do not pay us to publish your book. We review all submissions to determine if they are a good fit with our catalog. We will proofread and edit
your manuscript as appropriate. However, we may reject a submission that has too many errors, or we may return it to you for changes. We work with writers when we develop book. You will be given a
chance to approve the final pdf file before it is submitted to the printer.
Since we are a small operation, we do not pay advances, but we also give you a much larger share of the receipts from your book. We will deduct $250* from the initial receipts from sales to cover
our expenses in proofing, editing, layout, graphics design, conversion to Kindle & Nook formats and digital transfer, and initial promotion. After that we keep 20% of the receipts from sales of all
formats of the book and you receive 80%. That is much higher than the 10-15% royalty that some publishers offer. Retailers pay us 30-60 days after your book sells and we will pay you within 30 days
of our receipt of the funds.
We work in partnership with you. We do not have a huge staff of salespeople or publicists but that means more of the money ends up in your pocket.
Should we chose to publish yout work, we will place it for sale in trade paperback format and/or e-book format with Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com. We register all our books with Bowker's Books-in-Print
and other databases and encourage online and brick-and-mortar stores to carry them. We promote the books we sell on our Facebook and Twitter pages and with periodic press releases.
We encourage reviewers, bloggers and other media publishers to review the books we published.
*That is our standard deal. In some cases we may negotiate other deals.
General Writing Tips:
- Write in any fashion that works for you: in order, out of order, with an outline, without an outline. Do whatever it takes to get to "the end."
- When you are satisfied that it is perfect, throw it in a closet or otherwise ignore it for at least six months.
- Read it and rewrite it.
- Find some friends to proof it and critique it.
- Rewrite it.
- Submit it.
Types of work we will not accept:
- Graphic novels or picture books -- We aren't currently set up to print them or convert them to e-books;
- Social Networking or Search Engine Optimization -- Not interested in publishing it;
- Pseudoscience -- Editor is sceptic;
- Politics -- Just not interest in publishing it;
- Pornography -- Some erotic content is okay in context but not interested in something primarily focused on sex.
- Secret told to you by aliens and/or a dream on how to save the world -- Don't know how to classify that but not interested in publishing it.
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