I used to think writers control the page. You write, it holds. End of story. Clean, adult logic. But years of drafts later, I’m not convinced. The page almost always moves first. A shove here, a pause there. Like it rearranges the room before I even sit down. I drop a sentence, and the page stretches it, compresses it, pushes it into a corner. Bossy thing.

Paragraphs—I used to think they were just… paragraphs. Blocks. Containers. Now they feel more like temperature readings. So, paragraphs have their own weather. A long one usually means I’m circling something I don’t want to deal with. I’ll tell myself I’m “building context,” but really I’m pacing in place with sentences. The shorter ones—almost annoyingly short—tend to appear when something uncomfortable leaks out faster than I expected. Not a confession, but the slip of it. Like muttering something under your breath and realizing afterward you actually meant it.

White space is worse. Or better. Depends on the day. It’s the part I didn’t write but somehow still counts. The breath I didn’t take but the reader hears. I leave a gap and suddenly the sentence above it gets louder. Or fragile. Hard to predict. The page does its own atmospheric shifts. People keep insisting it’s just formatting—decoration, layout, whatever—but anytime I leave a chunk of it, it refuses to sit quietly. It feels closer to when someone stops mid-sentence at dinner and everyone sort of freezes but pretends not to. That odd little beat where you’re waiting, not sure if they forgot their point or decided against saying it. And then someone drops a spoon and the whole atmosphere shifts. That’s what the space does. Not elegant. Definitely not neutral. Just this small, slightly uncomfortable pause that carries more tension than the words before it.

I’ve stopped believing that writing is all “meaning first, form later.” The shape comes first, most of the time. I write horizontally—dragging sentences from left to right in the most basic way—and the page reacts in whatever direction it wants. It nudges things, squashes them, stretches them. A line I meant to keep steady sags somehow. Another one sticks out too far, like it’s trying to get attention. Honestly, many of the “good choices” people compliment me for come from my hand twitching or hitting Enter wrong because my wrist cramped. Accidents wearing shoes that look intentional.

Sometimes the weird part is how the page catches honesty I didn’t notice. I’ll rearrange a paragraph out of frustration, and suddenly it sounds more real than whatever careful sentence I originally built. It didn’t come from some craft epiphany. The page just made the call while I was annoyed and hungry. Happens more often than I admit. People love talking about voice and clarity and all the polished stuff, but most days I’m just trying to keep the draft from sliding out of shape.

There’s this background part of writing nobody explains in any workshop. Not the deep, thoughtful bit—just the tired part. The part where you stare too long at the screen and the whole paragraph starts looking crooked even if you swear it was straight earlier. You fix one tiny thing, and something else shifts left or right for no reason. You undo it, and somehow it looks worse, so you redo it and now the whole section feels lopsided. No symbolism. No hidden craft lesson. Just the regular, slightly irritating way text misbehaves when you’ve been at it longer than you should have. I know this sounds dramatic for something as boring as layout. But the truth is: the page reveals things. The architecture of thought before the thought is clean. The mess before the clarity. I’ve written paragraphs shaped like avoidance. Others shaped like relief. Didn’t mean to. Didn’t notice until later.

The page thinks in ways I don’t. Spatial logic. Breath accounting. Quiet math. I write horizontally; the page writes vertically, diagonally, in all the ways I don’t look at. And maybe that’s the partnership—me trying to get the idea down, the page nudging it into a shape that says the part I won’t say outright. I don’t trust myself to know where the meaning actually lives. Somewhere between the words and the gaps, probably. Somewhere in the tilt of the line. The page catches that before I do. Holds it there.

But maybe that’s also the point. The page has its own logic. Its own timing. Its own stubborn posture. And it doesn’t wait for me to catch up. So yes, the page thinks. Not in a mystical way—just in its own odd, spatial, inconvenient rhythm. And if I don’t think with it, it will rearrange everything anyway. Not out of malice. Just… because that’s what it does. Whether I’m ready or not.

Sometimes smarter than me. Sometimes sharper. And if I don’t listen, it’ll rearrange the whole thing behind my back anyway.

That’s writing, I guess. Two brains. Mine, and the one made of margins.

Probably.

Bio: Sabyasachi Roy is an academic writer, poet, artist, and photographer. His poetry has appeared in The Broken Spine, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review, Dicey Brown, The Potomac, and more. He contributes craft essays to Authors Publish and has a cover image in Sanctuary Asia. His oil paintings have been published in The Hooghly Review. You can follow his writing on Substack here.

“Dear Emily,
My novel has been through years of revisions now, and I’ve shopped it around to most agents and publishers. I could revise it one more time, but I’m not sure I have that in me or if it will change anything. What do I do now?”

There is no one easy answer to this question, but there are options that most writers have available to them.

Many writers think of self-publishing as the only option, and while it certainly is one, it is not the only one.

Below are the three best ways forward from rejection in my opinion.

Self-publish

I’ve worked with many authors who’ve ended up self-publishing, and some of them have been successful going down that route, and really are grateful they chose to self-publish it. Others have regretted it.

If you are going to self-publish, do not work with a vanity or hybrid press, actually self-publish. I talk more about what the distinction is and why you should avoid vanity and hybrid presses here.

Make sure you have an excellent cover and get proof copies in advance to verify that the printer is doing a good job.

It is important to go all out in terms of self-promotion. Make yourself a marketing plan with a six-month lead time to the sale of the book, so you really can put thought and effort into promoting it. This article isn’t about promoting books so I won’t go into more details here, but I will highly encourage you to watch this terrific lecture by Nev March about book marketing beforehand. She’s a traditional author but a lot of her advice is still very helpful and it can make the scope of marketing clearer.

Write another book

I understand that this option is a little confusing, but the fact is most authors don’t get the first book they write published, or rather, they don’t get it published first.

Jennifer Givhan, the poet and novelist, had her first manuscript, Jubilee, rejected widely. She then wrote a second novel, Trinity Sight, and found an agent to represent it. That agent eventually successfully placed both Trinity Sight and Jubilee with a respected traditional publisher.

I have also seen so many other examples of this as a friend and a reader. It’s a far from uncommon story.

In any case writing a brand new book can be a great and helpful experience as writers often take all that they learned writing and revising their first book into writing the second. So right from the start they have a much better first draft.

For writers who are feeling particularly burnt out, consider writing shorter pieces for a bit. These are generally much easier to place and that can help your query letter and your confidence.

Give the project space to breathe

Often it can be tempting to just force a revision to have one, even if you aren’t inspired to do it. In my experience revising too soon after writing the previous draft or after receiving critique, is not generally helpful.

Writers in this situation tend to focus on surface level revisions, and making hasty decisions with little thought involved.

I think it’s much better to give yourself time and form a plan for revising that you are excited about, before working on revising this work. Sometimes this takes weeks, other times years.

In conclusion

No matter which option you chose, I think it’s important to remember that most people who set out to write a novel never complete one, so you have already achieved a lot more than most.

Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The 2025 Guide to Manuscript Publishers. She regularly teaches three acclaimed courses on writing and publishing at The Writer’s Workshop at Authors Publish. You can follow her on Facebook here.

Metaphors are supposed to help, like seasoning on fries. But some writers go full gourmet-mad-scientist and coat the fries in sixteen herbs, two existential crises, and one childhood memory. Suddenly nobody can taste the potato. That’s metaphor fatigue: when language flexes so hard it pulls something.

I blame poetry. And caffeine. And that one workshop guy who compared a breakup to “a cathedral collapsing in slow motion across three continents.” Calm down, sir. She just blocked your number. The earth did not fold in half.

Readers glaze over when a writer treats metaphors like automatic sprinklers—everything gets soaked whether it needs it or not. Feels like stepping into someone’s living room where the furniture keeps waving its arms trying to get your attention first. The lamp is a lonely spaceship. The rug is an emotional wound. The coffee mug is a haunted throat. Someone needs to unplug the dramatic outlet.

I experienced this personally last week. I tried describing my cat hopping off the counter, and my brain coughed up some ridiculous lunar-poetry nonsense about tides: “She descended like the moon surrendering to the tides.” I stared at this sentence for a while-horrified. Like it had personally insulted my family. My cat weighs eleven pounds and knocks over spoons for sport. Nothing about her “surrenders.” I deleted it and ate a cookie in shame. Sometimes a jump is just a jump.

The worst offenders are metaphors that try too hard to be clever — the kind that walk into the scene wearing sunglasses indoors, announcing themselves like, “Hello, ladies.” You can feel the writer sweating behind it, whispering, “This one’s gonna win me a prize.” No it’s not. It’s going to make your reader squint and start thinking about grocery lists.

Humor helps catch the problem. If the metaphor sounds like something that dude hanging behind the gas station—yes, the one with the mysterious hat and the “I swear I’m sober” voice—would whisper at stupid o’clock in the morning, probably toss it out. Example: “Her sorrow unfurled like an artisanal pretzel.” See? Honestly, that line should come with one of those ugly orange stickers you see on cheap appliances.

And writers—god love us—keep tossing metaphors around like they’re salt shakers, forgetting they’re supposed to be a sprinkle, not the whole damn support beam holding the house up. To land it in a very poetic manner to soothe your conscience: they are just seasoning baby, not scaffolding. You don’t build a house out of oregano. And you definitely don’t build a paragraph out of twelve competing metaphors, each fighting for the last brain cell your reader has left. It’s visual clutter. Emotional static. Like trying to watch a movie while someone vacuums and the dog is learning to bark in a new accent.

Let the literal world do some work. Literal moments are underrated. A character fumbles a key. A plate cracks. A shirt smells like someone else’s perfume. These are tiny landmines. And you don’t need to compare them to tornadoes wearing cowboy boots. Just let them be themselves, the little weirdos.

Sarcasm moment: I know, I know. How dare we ask writers to tone down their special sparkly word-magic. “But my metaphor about sadness being a walrus in a prom dress is my unique voice!” Sure, buddy. And my blender is a time machine. We’re all delusional before breakfast.

The trick — and I use “trick” loosely, like the way magicians use pigeons — is to apply metaphors only when the literal hits a wall. If the sentence already works, don’t decorate it like a Christmas tree left unsupervised near a preschool craft bin. Readers will feel the glitter in their teeth.

Metaphor fatigue happens when writers forget that images should land, not hover like confused drones above the page. Let the language breathe. Let objects stay objects. Let emotions show themselves without wearing opera costumes.

Because when everything is a wildfire, nothing burns — and your novel ends up smelling like overcooked metaphor stew.

Bio: Sabyasachi Roy is an academic writer, poet, artist, and photographer. His poetry has appeared in The Broken Spine, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review, Dicey Brown, The Potomac, and more. He contributes craft essays to Authors Publish and has a cover image in Sanctuary Asia. His oil paintings have been published in The Hooghly Review. You can follow his writing on Substack here.

Panorama
This is ‘the journal of travel, place, and nature’. For their upcoming issue, they want nonfiction (including new nature writing), fiction, poetry, art, and more on the Reflections theme. Regarding new nature writing, they say, “New nature writing is a genre-fluid form that encompasses memoir/travel/and nature writing with an especial foregrounding of the challenges of the Climate Crisis. It is a form that loves to transgress borders. We would be delighted to receive writing with an ethical dimension and ecological awareness that encourages the reader to mindfully negotiate the shared landscapes of the human and more-than-human. 1500-3000 words.” The submission deadline is  14 February 2026. Details here, here, and here.

Terrain.org
They publish literature, artwork, and commentary on place, climate, and justice. “Our online journal accepts … essays, fiction, articles, artwork, videos, and other contributions—material that reaches deep into the earth’s fiery core, or humanity’s incalculable core, and brings forth new insights and wisdom. We are seeking work in English (or translation) from around the world, and particularly Indigenous, Native, Black, Brown, and other historically marginalized and underrepresented voices as we expand our contributions on social, environmental, and climate justice.” They pay $50. Poetry is closed; fiction and nonfiction of up to 5,000 words are open till 30^th April 2026. They also accept submissions for ARTerrain and Letter to America sections. Details here and here.

Fork Apple Press: The Core Review
The Core Review is a project of Fork Apple Press, which publishes “themes and symbols of desire, consumption, spirituality, gender, environment, cultivation, and wildness. … We’re excited about pieces engaged with environmental justice, postcolonial feminism, queerness in all its humanizing and messy forms, and to support writers’ expansion beyond these topics in ways that move them. … We deconstruct the narratives that have traditionally dominated literary spaces and conventions and are committed to work that writes toward a future beyond prejudice and limitations. We invite work that upends, restructures, and reformats the predetermined conversation through genre blurring, experimentation, multimodality, and authenticity.” You can read more about them here. The  Core Review publishes prose (up to 6,000 words), visual narrative, and poetry. And, Fork Apple Press’s blog, The Juice Blog, publishes craft essays. The deadline for prose and poetry for The Core Review is end-March. Details here and here.
(Fork Apple Press also runs short fiction collection and poetry chapbook contests, which are fee-based.)

Violet Lichen Books: ECO25 – The Year’s Best Speculative Ecofiction
Violet Lichen Books is an imprint of Apex Book Company. This is their second annual reprint anthology. “Editors and publishers are encouraged to nominate their best works of speculative ecofiction published in 2025. … This is a best-of anthology and nominations are open to previously published stories only.” Authors can nominate their own works. “The story must be ecofiction; e.g., the plot or main themes must be focused on ecology, climate, the environment, conservation, the natural world, our relationship to animals and other non-human life, or related themes. A story merely set in nature or in a climate-based scenario is not enough to qualify, if it does not engage with these themes.” Stories must contain speculative elements. The original publication date must be between January 1 and December 31 2025. If the story is a translation, the eligibility year is the English publication date. And, stories published in Apex Magazine or in Apex Book Company anthologies or in works edited by staff are eligible. They pay $0.01/word for stories of 950 – 7,500 words, and the deadline is 31 January 2026. Details here and here.

Rotting Leaf Magazine
Rotting Leaf Magazine accepts eco-fiction (broadly defined), eco-horror, eco-Gothic/Antigothic, and more; any other uses of eco-fiction that challenge, shift, or obliterate the nature-society binary. They open for fiction as well as hybrid and experimental forms (no poetry) up to 1,500 words during the first week of each month, and stay open until a submission cap is reached. They pay $0.06/word. Details here.

Hollow and Sky
This is a new magazine, they are reading for their first issue. “We welcome work that arrives from a place of attention.
Hollow and Sky is a space for writing and art shaped by listening to the inner world, to the living world, and to the spaces where the two meet.” And, “We are interested in poetry, short prose, and visual work that engages with:

• Spiritual or metaphysical inquiry
• The natural world
• Interior landscapes
• Stillness, grief, wonder, memory, and restraint

We value work grounded in lived experience and honest observation. We are not interested in doctrine, instruction, or certainty.” They accept prose of up to 3,000 words, up to 5 poems, and art. The submission deadline is 5^th February 2026. Details here.

Catalogue Zine
Their About page says, “We’re a magazine based on helping people learn about and get involved in climate action, while demonstrating not only the scientific aspects of climate advocacy but how our lives are intertwined and intersect with our climate, cultures, and communities.” They want submissions on the Lifestyle theme; “Lifestyle represents the moving pieces that texture how you move around in this world. When we talk about the environment, “individual action” is core to the world because we all have equal stakes in taking care of the one place we can call home. This issue, we want to see (but is not limited to)
Thoughtful reflections on individual action: Are you using ChatGPT, partaking in fast fashion, or using public transportation when it’s an option? Your relationship with the Earth: do you feel connected to the ocean, the animals, and the plant life that are our neighbors on Earth? Are you being mindful about places you are traveling to, like Hawai’i? What small changes can we be making in our everyday life to make the greatest difference? How should we navigate adapting our lifestyle?
We want to see poetry, photography, art, short stories, personal essays, and informative pieces on this topic.” The deadline is 20^th February 2026. Details here.

Haven Speculative
They publish speculative fiction and poetry. They now have Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall submission periods; during each period, they have a month reserved for submissions from underrepresented writers, and a month for general submissions from all writers. They also publish climate crisis focused Dry and Wet issues each year. They accept up to 5,000 words for fiction, up to 5 poems, and pay $0.08/word for fiction, $20/poem. Till 31 January 2026, they want submissions from underrepresented writers only; “authors of color, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and other underrepresented groups.” And from 1^st to 28^th February, they will be open to submissions by all writers. Details here and here.

Channel Magazine
This Ireland-based magazine publishes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. “We love work that speaks directly of a writer’s bond with and fear for our planet, and work that takes a local landscape, or a local flower, as its subject; equally, though, we love work that draws on an aspect of nature as setting, image or metaphor. We believe that all writing relies to some extent on historical engagement with nature, in that all human language has been shaped by our embeddedness in our shared environments.” Fiction and poetry are read during submission periods. Nonfiction (considered for both print and online) is accepted on an ongoing bases. They accept submissions in English and Irish. They pay €35 per printed page up to €250 per piece and with a minimum fee of €60 for single-page works; and €35 per 400 words, up to a maximum of €250 per piece, with a minimum fee of €60 for work published online. Details here.

The Other Folk: Fables for the Dying
“The Other Folk publishes short, horrific prose—by which we mean flash fiction, essays, and prose poems dealing with horror tropes, themes, and subjects”. For their Fables for the Dying series, they accept horror-themed flash and short fiction and nonfiction, prose poetry, and hybrid works; they’re interested in a wide range of horror subgenres, including eco-horror. They accept up to 1,500 words for prose and up to 500 words for prose poetry. Details here.

The Dodge
“The Dodge seeks fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, visual art, and translation focused on place and environment. We’re excited by a wide range of forms and approaches, including hybrid and experimental work. We especially seek creative works that imagine a just future for the planet, and among other things, we’re interested in broadening the scope of stories, poems, and essays about nature, animals, and nonhuman life; we hope to see translations across borders, time, and space. 
Given our focus on environmental justice, we’re eager to champion emerging and marginalized voices underrepresented in magazine publishing and eco-writing, including writers and artists who are Black, Indigenous, people of color, people who are trans, gender-nonconforming, and LGBTQIA+, people with disabilities, women, and others.
A note on writing about animals: We receive a lot of work focused on dogs, cats, and charismatic megafauna. Obviously, these nonhuman animals are important in our human lives, and people write great things about them, many of which we’ve published. But we’re really excited to read about other less explicable creatures as well. Eco-writing as we see it can include minerals, fungi, forests, insects, fire, etc.” At the time of writing, they were open for translation, nonfiction, and visual art. The deadline is 1^st April 2026. Details here and here.

Bio: S. Kalekar is the pseudonym of a regular contributor to this magazine. She can be reached here.

People act like quitting a story is a crime. Like the Draft Police will show up at your door with a citation: “You abandoned a narrative at 38% completion. Please pay this emotional fine.” Relax. Walking away is a skill. A craft move. Like when chefs throw out a sauce because it tastes like regret. Or when you stop dating someone because they yell at baristas.

The trick is recognizing when the story has turned its back. There’s this weird moment—you sit down, open the doc, and the story’s just… there. Staring at you like a lamp that isn’t plugged in but somehow still judging your life choices. You tap a sentence, it doesn’t even twitch. Just gives you the vibe of, “Buddy, stop. I clocked out. Stop touching me.”

I once tried to force a novella to keep going for three months. Three. Months. The thing fought me harder than a toddler refusing vegetables. It kept dropping hints—awkward scenes, flat jokes, characters who had the emotional range of expired yogurt. I ignored all of it because I thought persistence was noble. Spoiler: persistence was stupid. The story wasn’t a struggling plant. It was a corpse. A polite, floral-scented corpse, but still.

There’s this idea floating around that every abandoned story is a personal failure. Nah. Some stories are just hit-and-run lessons. They show up, smack you with a weird metaphor, teach you one tiny technique, and then wander off into the fog like a raccoon philosopher.

Learning to step away is like learning the perfect time to leave a terrible party. Too early, and you feel rude. Too late, and you end up holding someone’s pet lizard while they explain cryptocurrency. But somewhere in the middle—right at the moment you sense the room going stale—you slip out gracefully. No guilt. No drama. No lizards.

Nobody mentions this, probably because it sounds unprofessional, but half-finished drafts sometimes kick harder than the polished ones. They’ve got that garage-sale energy—odd scraps, a character who feels like they’re hiding contraband, a location that smells faintly like wet socks and ambition. You flip through the pieces thinking, “Did I even write this, or was I sleep-texting?” These pieces are gifts. They’re like spare parts from IKEA that don’t belong to anything but might still fix a chair.

And honestly, sometimes the story just leaves you first. No note. No goodbye. All you find is a sentence fragment on the kitchen counter, something cryptic like “the lantern hummed…,” and now you’re supposed to interpret that like it’s ancient prophecy.

Let it go. Let it wander. There’s no point chasing a story that clearly faked its own death. Go write something that actually texts you back.

Leaving a story isn’t some dramatic slow-motion exit. It’s more like: you blink, shrug, mutter “yeah, whatever dude,” and slide your chair toward something that at least pretends to cooperate. The whole vibe is very “oh crap, I forgot I have clothes molding in the washer”—zero romance, all practicality.

And here’s the magic trick nobody mentions: the abandoned stories usually come back. When they feel like it. When you’ve moved on. When you’re in the middle of something else and suddenly the old draft kicks down the door yelling, “HEY, I HAVE AN ENDING NOW.” Rude, but comforting.

So yeah. Not every story wants to be finished.

Some only want to be found halfway, wink at you mysteriously, and then saunter off to annoy some other writer.

Grace is knowing when to wave back.

And then go eat snacks.

Bio: Sabyasachi Roy is an academic writer, poet, artist, and photographer. His poetry has appeared in The Broken Spine, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review, Dicey Brown, The Potomac, and more. He contributes craft essays to Authors Publish and has a cover image in Sanctuary Asia. His oil paintings have been published in The Hooghly Review. You can follow his writing on Substack here.

I recently presented a conference workshop entitled “Creative Approaches to Direct Marketing Events.” The workshop’s first step asked participants to think about themes from their book that would appeal to their target audiences. Once the foundation was in place, the plan was to brainstorm ideas for events, organizations, interest groups, venues, etc. to expand their marketing opportunities beyond “an author talk at the local library.”

But here’s the rub: My audience floundered on identifying “target audiences” for their book, the bedrock to any marketing plan. I was a bit shocked. Everything I’d learned about writing a query letter, preparing my media kit, and self-marketing my books emphasized the need to understanding and concisely defining my book’s target audiences. As a presenter, perhaps I assumed too much. (I have since revised my presentation!)

In this article, I present common fallacies about target audiences, explore why authors need to understand their target audiences, and provide tools to help identify specific target audiences.

Common Fallacies about Target Audiences

This first common fallacy I hear over and over: “My book is for everyone!” While that thought may make you feel warm and fuzzy, it’s not going to help you, and may even give you a false sense of marketing security.

Next common fallacy often heard is: “My book is for everyone who likes (inset genre here). While this is better, it’s not specific enough. It often stems from querying authors who need to add comp titles. But for marketing purposes, you’ll need to go further.

Before we work on how to create concise definitions of who that target reader is, what they look like, and what they enjoy doing, let’s dive into why understanding your target audiences is essential to your book marketing plan.

Why Authors Need to Understand Target Audiences

It cannot be stressed enough that understanding your book’s unique target audiences will inform all your marketing decisions. These decisions include: How you position your website; What you post on your social media; How to prep your media kit; What articles you write in your newsletters/blogs; Who you invite to your events; How you write your press release; How you position any paid advertisements; How you prep for a publicist, should you choose to hire one; How you pitch to podcasters and/or bloggers; and How you pitch to organizations, groups, or venues with creative ideas for book events.

And note: Even if you write a series, each book may have a slightly different list of target audiences, which in turn may alter your marketing efforts. The idea, of course, is that you want to build and expand your readership with each subsequent book you publish.

Tools to Identify Target Audiences
There are several considerations to help you define your specific target audience list, which I outline below:

• Genre can help immediately (Historical Fiction or Memoir) but, as I mentioned earlier, while a good starting point, it’s still too broad. Sometimes using comps to help narrow can be helpful here: Readers of (Name the comp title). But note, unless the comp is well known, you might miss the mark.
• For Non-fiction you might appeal to a specific problem. For example, widows helping new widows or, in a memoir, focusing on a particular angle that will help others.

So, by using genre you now have one or two on your target audiences list. How else can you define your readers?

• Using specific demographics, you can focus even further on your readers’ profiles. For example, what is the typical age and gender of your book’s readers. Also, would your book’s geographical location(s) attract readers of the same locales? For example, my debut Retro fiction is set in 1970s with an important locale in Baltimore’s Little Italy. Female and male seniors (age 55-75) with ties to Baltimore are one target audience for me.

Using demographics, you may have added one or two more to your target audiences list. Let’s keeping going.

• Finally, by parsing out your book’s themes, you can connect with readers who have interests in those specific areas. For example, your book about the Civil War may attract lovers of the Civil War, broadly. But you’ll have a lot of market competition. You’ll reach a more specific target audience with Lovers of Civil War Medicine (with that is one of the themes of your book.)

Conclusion
Of course, as an author you need a platform including a website, social media outreach, a newsletter or blog. And you’ll probably need to consider creative direct marketing opportunities like author talks, vendor events, readings, and showcases. But if you haven’t identified WHO your target audiences are, you could just be spinning your wheels. Understanding that your target audiences are the foundation of your marketing plan will go a long way in building your future readership.

Bio: Jean Burgess is an author and editor. Her debut fiction, That Summer She Found Her Voice: A Retro Novel, was published by Apprentice House in 2024. Navigating Her Next Chapter will be published in 2026. Jean holds an MA in Theatre from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in Educational Theatre from New York University.

Bio: S. Kalekar is the pseudonym of a regular contributor to this magazine. She can be reached here.

“Write what you know” is common advice, but sometimes, we need to know more about the things we’re using in our stories, and that requires research. 

The illusion of research as productive work

But research is a double-edged sword: it is as distracting as it is useful. As you click on yet another link about the history of pencils or download another book on pioneers in early childhood education, it can seem that you’re getting a lot of work done—just look at the all the notes you’ve made, the tags you’ve added, the long list of bookmarks saved in your browser.

But more time spent on research—along with elaborate systems for recording what you find—doesn’t necessarily mean you’re researching effectively. It just means you’re spending a lot of time that could be utilized in a better way to help you write your story.

Consider when to outline vs when to directly write a first draft

One way of making research effective is to consider what form you’re writing—is it a book of historical fiction? A medical story featuring fairies and aliens? A travelogue about your visit to ancient human settlements? A personal essay about your family home that has since been razed down? 

In some cases, you might want to first outline your story. This is especially important in reported nonfiction, where everything is fact-checked before publishing. Any wrong information on which you base your entire draft (many such stories have 5,000+ words) will cost you a lot of time and effort since your foundation would crumble.

In other cases, it would be more effective to write a first draft. You can first tell how the fairies responded to inhumane medical procedures by the ruling alien class with violent revolution and then figure out the details of the said procedure and its effects.

This is not to say, however, that the research into such procedures you undertook for fun might not someday prove useful. A lot of our stories stem from such unplanned reading. The problem is deciding to write about a fairy revolution against unethical surgery, then spending hours on undirected research and then never writing the actual story.

Both an outline and a first draft can help you recognize what it is that you need to know more about. Once you identify the gaps, your research can become more focused.

To avoid too much distraction and create a useful plan, I suggest making a checklist. The surgery on the fairies might be destroying their long-term memory, for example. You might thus want to look into the various types of long-term memory, how they’re formed and reconstructed, and how neurosurgery or accidents have affected long-term memory in particular patients. Or you might want to look into citizen-led changes in the ethical code of doctors. 

Once you have a draft, which gives you an idea of the timeframe, the point of view, and the protagonist, you’ll know which particular subtopic to focus on. Your search will depend on whether your story, for example, is a history of the revolution, or a first-person telling as the violence unfolds, told from the perspective of a victim, their loved one, or the aliens. The alien surgeon might be having a dilemma, forced to perform the surgery on a fairy he’s in love with, in which case you might head towards the philosophy subsection. The victim’s loved one might be thinking of the relationship they’ve lost with the memories gone, in which case you might look to theories of loss and grief. 

So, depending on your story, make an outline or write a draft, then go over the work to make a list of the specific details you need to fill in. As interesting the other bits might be, save them for reading when your story is done.

The benefits of offline, rather than online, research

On the web, research can seem endless. Hyperlinks can take you in a hundred different directions, which will not only suck up your time but also make you feel overwhelmed because you won’t know what to read first. And it’ll encourage perfectionism, because you’ll think you need to know more, more, and more before you’ve researched “enough” to write even the first line of your story. 

An antidote to this that I love is conducting your research offline. We think the limitlessness of the internet is a blessing but offline research might actually provide you with something more interesting, since constraints enhance, not diminish, creativity.

Instead of opening your laptop, consider heading to a bookstore or a library. Use the dictionary to look up not just meanings but etymologies and related words. Read an encyclopedia or the newspaper. Maybe even pick up a school textbook.

These are definitely useful in fiction writing, but they can open the doors for nonfiction too: you might find an interesting place nearby to explore and write about, or a local citizen who’s been working on improving her neighborhood for three decades now. The bulk of the research in such cases will require you to step outside the house instead of inside a computer screen.

And that, in addition to making research less distracting and more fruitful, might make your work distinctive—for you’d be noticing what’s not easily available online or trending everywhere. You might literally be going on, to quote Robert Frost, the road not taken.

Bio: Ratika Deshpande is a writer from India. Her work has appeared in Authors Publish, Reactor Magazine, the Brevity Blog, and other platforms. You can support her writing here.

Everybody writes emotion. Big whoop. People have been writing heartbreak since someone in a cave got ghosted via smoke signals. What almost no one writes well is the pre-quake. The stutter. The static charge right before the lightning smacks the lawn chair. I’m talking about the moment when your character hasn’t cried yet, but their eyeballs are already turning into stingy little gossipers.

Think: grief doesn’t start when someone dies. It starts when the phone rings at some unworldly time and your stomach rolls over like a bored dog. You haven’t gotten the words yet, but your body’s filing the paperwork early.

Writers screw up by jumping straight to the impact. A character’s mom dies? Boom — tears, screaming, throwing themselves on the floor like an Oscar reel. But the moment before the news hit — that’s where the story actually breathes. It’s the emotional equivalent of tripping but not hitting the ground yet. You’re midair, deeply reconsidering your life choices, probably holding a latte like a complete idiot.

Physics people call that “suspended state” or something academic-sounding. I call it “Oh no oh no oh no” energy.

So what’s happening in that sliver of time?

Tension behaves like bad electricity. It crawls up the arms first. Then the jaw sets, because apparently the jaw thinks it’s the designated hero. Your character notices one weirdly specific detail — the chipped blue mug, the dog staring too long, the window that suddenly looks suspiciously tragic. The brain loves props. It’s dramatic like that.

The best part? None of this requires the character to understand anything. They’re still clueless, standing there like someone who just opened the fridge and forgot why. That’s what you want on the page: hyper-focus mixed with total mental stupidity.

I once had this moment at the DMV. Not tragic — just emotionally dumb. The clerk called my number, voice flat as cardboard, and I swear my chest did this weird medieval drumroll. For what? A form? A new photo? A gladiator match? Who knows. My body just did its own thing. That’s what I mean. The body is your funniest, most chaotic narrator.

Writers often think the emotional hit is the powerful part. It’s not.

Impact is predictable. Everyone cries eventually. Yawn. The gold is in the hesitation — the half-second where your character senses the shape of the incoming emotion but can’t name it yet, like trying to guess a horror movie monster from the shadow behind the shower curtain.

One trick: write the delay like it has mass. Make the air heavier. Make the room slow down by one ridiculous millisecond. Let objects act like they’re in on the joke. A lamp might suddenly look judgmental. A spoon may become ominous. This is the universe doing improv.

Another trick: let the character misinterpret the feeling. Humans are awful at emotions. We constantly confuse panic for hunger and heartbreak for seasonal allergies. Let your character do that. “My chest feels tight — must be gas.” Yes. Let them be dense. It’s charming.

And sprinkle humor. People make jokes before they scream. It’s physics. Even funerals get that one uncle whispering, “Well… at least parking was easy,” and boom — there’s humanity.

Your job as a writer: stay in the before-zone.

Keep the camera on the breath before the sob.

The half-smile before the breakup lands.

The frozen doorway before the bad-news phone call.

Write the moment that’s holding its breath, clutching the rail, waiting to fall —

because everyone knows the landing hurts.

The magic’s in the hang time.

Bio: Sabyasachi Roy is an academic writer, poet, artist, and photographer. His poetry has appeared in The Broken Spine, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review, Dicey Brown, The Potomac, and more. He contributes craft essays to Authors Publish and has a cover image in Sanctuary Asia. His oil paintings have been published in The Hooghly Review. You can follow his writing on Substack here.

A social media profile is a powerful tool for writers. While many writers are naturally introverted and prefer to keep a low profile, hiding your creativity can present challenges. It’s perfectly fine to be introverted, but don’t let it silence your voice.

This article will show you exactly how to build visibility on social media.

1. Develop a Strong Personal Brand: This is essential. Optimize your profile with a great photo. If you’re creating a separate account for your writing, consider designing a professional logo. Establishing a consistent color palette can also help reinforce your personal brand.
2. Optimize Your Profile’s Bio: Clearly state what you do and what your audience should expect; you can write something engaging and intriguing, like: “A creative writer with a vault of unlocked manuscripts, ready to share them with the world.” Or “Take a glimpse into what this creative mind has to offer.”
3. Post Consistent Snippets of Your Work: This is where many writers miss an opportunity. Create a weekly or daily schedule for sharing excerpts or short pieces of your writing. Be aware that most publishers are not interested in work that has been published entirely on social media before, so keep excerpts short.
4. Ignore the Likes: Likes are a nice form of encouragement, but they aren’t the primary goal. Don’t be discouraged by low like counts; focus on sharing your writing and be consistent.
5. Share Your Small Wins: Celebrate your writing journey! Post about milestones you achieve, challenges you participate in, or when you complete a new manuscript.
6. Engage and Build Community: Be intentional about responding to comments on your post, let your audience know you appreciate them, this also helps to build trust and closer bond with your readers and audience.
7. Participate In Writing Trends and Challenges: Join writing trends within writing communities on social media, this helps in reaching out to other writers, and to a wider audience.

Bonus Tips: Here are the best ways to utilize different social media platforms to showcase your writing.

Facebook: Post your creative work as standalone content posts.

Instagram: Use Reels with your voice as a voiceover reading your work, or share your writing using a visually appealing Carousel format.

TikTok: This platform is video-focused. If you’re camera-shy, you can still create engaging voiceover videos.

Twitter/X: Write and share short, creative snippets. Be sure to use relevant hashtags for your specific niche to increase visibility.

LinkedIn: As a professional network, instead of sharing your work directly, share tips you learned from a writing workshop, discuss how they’ve impacted your writing journey, and talk about your small professional achievements.

Bio: Immaculata Chidera Osuji is a Law graduate from Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Nigeria, born on July 9th. She is a writer, public speaker, leader, and change-maker. She is the author of “Blooming Faith,” “How To Intern Like A Pro” and “How I Got My Life Back” She is the founder of Immaculata Legal Network platform for law students. She has won several awards and gained various recognition. You can follow her on Facebook here.

If you belong to a limited demographic that is not listed here, this list might be helpful to you.

As long as a press/opportunity/journal is open to submissions we will continue to list it, so some of the content on the list is new, some overlaps with previous issues. This article is an ongoing collaborative effort by Emily Harstone and S. Kalekar. Please send us an email at support@authorspublish.com if you have any feedback or an opportunity/journal/publisher, to recommend.

Literary Journals/Magazines

Blanket Gravity Magazine
“Blanket Gravity Magazine is a journal for fiction, creative nonfiction, and visual art. We are interested in moments of emotional intensity, and how their effects ring out in the bigger picture of our identities. We are looking for writing and art that explore mental health or emotional life. By “mental health,” we mean art that tries to make sense of emotional struggle or uncertainty, as well as our thoughts about who we are, what other people mean to us, and the nature of the world.
For nonfiction, we hope to receive personal essays by people with lived experience of mental illness or emotional struggle.
We curate submissions for writing and art that will offer readers experiences outside their emotional pain, or a moment of interest or connection. We’re not trying to erase or replace negative moods—we’re trying to show an expression of care.” They pay $40. The deadline is 10^th January 2026 (with potential for extension).

Chestnut Review
They accept fee-free submissions of flash prose, poetry, and art from all writers. Black and Indigenous authors can also submit longer prose, of 1,000 to 5,000 words, fee-free. “We are drawn to beautiful language, resonant images, and we crave narrative.” They read throughout the year, with cut-off dates for issues. The deadline is 31 December 2025 (for the Spring issue). They pay $120. Details here and here.

Hybris Press: Otherside
This is a new magazine that accepts speculative fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art by 2SLGBTQIA+ creators only. You can read about them here. They are open for fiction reprints (for stories that cannot be read online for free) and nonfiction submissions currently. They will open for original fiction submissions from 1^st to 14^th January 2026, and they’ll have an extended submission window only for BIPOC, trans, and/or disabled authors, from 15^th to 21^st January. Their first issue will be published in March 2026. They do not accept work from writers who do not identify as 2SLGBTQIA+. They accept ongoing submissions for fiction reprints and nonfiction. They accept 500-7,500 words for reprint fiction (can also take novelette-length but will be a harder sell), up to 4,000 words for non-fiction (prefers up to 2,000 words). They pay $100 for fiction reprints and nonfiction.
Details here (click on each genre’s tab for detailed guidelines) and here.

The New York Times: Modern Love
Modern Love is a nonfiction column of the New York Times. They want “honest personal essays about contemporary relationships. We seek true stories on finding love, losing love and trying to keep love alive. We welcome essays that explore subjects such as adoption, polyamory, technology, race and friendship — anything that could reasonably fit under the heading “Modern Love.” Ideally, essays should spring from some central dilemma you have faced. It is helpful, but not essential, for the situation to reflect what is happening in the world now.” They especially welcome work from historically underrepresented writers, and from those outside the US. Send essays of 1,500-1,700 words. Send essays of 1,500-1,700 words. Writers are paid. Modern Love has two submission periods, March through June, and September through December.

Open Secrets Magazine: Food Insecurity Personal Essays
They are commissioning personal essays on food insecurity. They have detailed guidelines, including, “Open Secrets Magazine is seeking original, unpublished, non-AI-generated 1,000-2,500 word personal essays on the author’s current personal experience with food insecurity to be published in our Finances section. Priority will be given to those writing about their current experience related to food insecurity and SNAP benefits in the United States, but we are open to submissions from anywhere in the world on the topic and essays by U.S. authors unrelated to SNAP benefits. We don’t consider pitches, only full essay drafts submitted according to our guidelines.
We want to showcase the human sides of modern food insecurity and intend to publish essays by writers from a range of backgrounds, locations, races, genders, sexual orientations, and ages.” They also have a list of suggested topics. They pay $200, and will close the call once the slots are full. They will open for general submissions in 2026.

Bipolar Poetry
This not-for-profit online publication publishes original poetry by people who have been diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder.

The B’K Magazine
This art and literature magazine prioritizes and pays traditionally marginalized creators, but they are open to submissions from all. They have very in-depth and detailed submission guidelines that everyone should read carefully before submitting.

t’Art
This UK based organization wants to make space “for voices who don’t get as much space as everybody else”. They are a queer and trans-led collective, but they welcome work from everyone, while prioritizing underrepresented voices including LGBTQIA+ voices and voices of colour. Their online magazine is always open for submissions and they allow submissions of poetry, short films, music videos, recordings of live shows, audio tracks, animation, design and visual art collections. They also accept short stories, creative non-fiction and essays for the ‘Articles & Fiction’ section. They are also currently reading submissions for their Trans Tongue mini journal series, through December 21st. You can learn more about that here.

oteh nîkân
This Magazine publishes writing by LGBTQ2S+ Indigenous authors. Please only submit if you are Indigenous and LGBTQ2S+. They are open to poetry, fiction, and nonfiction (including scholarly writing and criticism). They are pay $300 CAD per prose piece and $200 CAD per poem. They are open to submissions year round.

Art-emis
This new online literary and arts journal plans on showcasing previously unpublished poetry, short fiction, short creative nonfiction, and art pieces by women, BIPOC, and LGBTQIA+ individuals in the New York Metropolitan Area. You can read their full submission guidelines here, please note that there is additional information for all submitters at the bottom of their submission guidelines.

In the Veins
Their website says they are “dedicated to publishing bold stories that push boundaries in Splatterpunk, horror, satire, and LGBTQ+ themes. We champion voices that explore the shadows of speculative fiction, fostering a community where dark imagination thrives and diverse narratives flourish. … We’re especially interested in the works of underrepresented groups: members of the LGBTQ+ and BIPOC communities, but we welcome all voices within the dark hard edged horror and satire communities.” They accept fiction (flash and short), poetry, articles, and art related to their genre.

manywor(l)ds
They want work from those who identify with and as any of the following: trans, two-spirit, disabled, neurodivergent, Mad, queer, crip, nonbinary, genderqueer, intersex. “This is a space for the words, works, and worlds of and by those whose bodyminds defy social expectations and invite new ways of thinking and knowing. We do not need to know the specifics of your identity/diagnosis/experience unless you want us to. We invite closeted and questioning people to share their work, as well as those whose experiences fall outside the confines of the language we used above.” They pay $10. They are open for submissions during January, March, April, June, July, September, October, and December.

Girl Dinner Digest
This new publication is interested in publishing a wide range of work including poetry, flash fiction, flash nonfiction, micro-reviews. Everything they publish is on the shorter side of things. They say: “Our online magazine aims to highlight the voices of women, nonbinary, queer, and any other creators who resonate with girlhood. If you fall into that realm of identity, you can submit to our mag.”

CVNT
A new journal that declares they exist “for the solicitation, exhibition, advancement, & support of transfeminine writers”. Submissions are restricted to transfeminine people, binary trans women, & genderqueer folks. They accept submissions of poetry, fiction, & creative nonfiction on a rolling basis.

Gasp Magazine 
I’m not linking to this publication in the title, because their website is not safe for work as they are a publisher of adult work. Please do not click on this link unless you are 18+/ They focus on sharing a multifaceted discussions on sexuality, eroticism, and queerness. They are interested in essays, interviews, research articles, creative writing, poetry, artistic illustrations, and photography (with additional rules) that reflect upon sex or the absence thereof in one way or another.

The Saartjie Journal
This new journal is only open to writing and visual art by Black women artists and writers. They accept submissions of previously unpublished original poems, short stories, and visual art.

Mande
This is a journal of bipolar talent. “Mande is always open to submissions from bipolar creatives on any topic. While I appreciate the long shadows bipolar throws, I’m particularly interested at the moment in its high points, in any joy or positive elements you find in bipolar. We also publish work by people familiar with bipolar, as long as it’s directly related to manic depression.” They pay for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and art. They pay $50-250. 

Midwest Weird
This is an audio literary magazine, seeking submissions of weird fiction or nonfiction from Midwestern authors, with a particular interest in underrepresented communities.

Cripple Punk Mag
This Substack publishes “essays, criticism, news and reviews, literary nonfiction, fiction, rants and raves, comics, and hybrid works on the subject of disability and live music, especially within the context of punk, alternative, and DIY music.”  They also have an annual print anthology. Payment starts at $10 and is dependent on length and sliding scale based on need. Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis. Previously published work is allowed, and work should be between 300 and 1000 words in length.

The West Trestle Review
This respected journal is only open to submissions poetry and art by creators around the globe who self-identify as women or as non-binary. They are always open to free submissions by BIPOC writers who self-identify as women or as non-binary, and you can see those guidelines here. 

Decolonial Passage
According to their website they “publish writing from writers of all backgrounds regardless of race, origin, or gender while simultaneously centering African, African American, and Black Diaspora writing.” Their mission statement goes into more details about this. They are open on a rolling basis to essays, creative nonfiction, short stories, and flash fiction. They are open to poetry only during the months of February, June, and October; and for prose, only during April, May, August, and December.

AC|DC
They publish short stories and creative nonfiction by LGBTQIA+ authors. They are currently open to submissions.

Magnets and Ladders
They publish the work of disabled writers in two issues a year.

DisLit Youth Magazine
They only publish work by writers 14-22, and they primarily publish disabled writers.

AURORE
This publications tagline is “a curated collection of erotic stories written by and for women and LGBTQ+ based on their own experiences”. Because it is a NSFW site, the link to get to it is here, instead of the title, please only click on it if you are 18+ They publish nonfiction erotica and their website is NSFW, please do not visit it if you are under 18.

Heaven Magazine
They are interested in publishing fiction, creative non fiction, flash, and poetry by all underrepresented creators.

Sinister Wisdom
A multicultural lesbian literary & art journal. Founded in 1976, this literary journal is always open to submissions.

Saffron City Press
Saffron City Press is an online literary journal dedicated to amplifying the voices of Middle Eastern and Middle Eastern-American writers.

Plentitude
They want submissions from LGBTQ2S+ writers only; their Submittable has separate submission slots for Canadian and international writers (international submissions reopened on the 1st October for fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction). Every genre has a monthly submission cap. Pay is CAD60 per poem, CAD125 per prose contribution (fiction and creative nonfiction), CAD100 for book reviews and Genre Bender (hybrid) submissions. The submission deadline for international writers is end-April, and for Canadian writers, it is end-May 2026. Details here and here.

The Kalahari Review
A weekly African literary magazine interested in material exploring modern Africa and Africans in unique and avant-garde ways. They publish their work on Medium.

Transition
Born in Africa and bred in the diaspora, Transition  is a publication of the Hutchins Center at Harvard University, published three times annually. Transition publishes writing by and about Africa and the African diaspora, with an eye towards a global perspective. They accept submissions year-round on a rolling basis, and generally respond to submissions within four months. 

Lavender Review
An international, biannual e-zine published in June and December, they are open to submissions of poetry and art by, about, and for lesbians (including whatever LGBTQ might appeal to a lesbian readership). Submissions are open year round.

Ricepaper
This publication offers Asian Canadian context to ongoing arts and cultural issues, new perspectives on emerging and established Asian Canadian artists, and challenges mainstream media perspectives, little-known facts of interest, or critical stories that haven’t been told elsewhere. They are open to submissions from Asian writers around the globe as long as the editors can see a link between the content and some aspect of the Asian Canadian experience.

Raising Mothers
Raising Mothers celebrates and centers the experiences of  Black, Indigenous, and Brown parents. Some sections have reading periods; columns are open year-round. Guidelines are here. See their call for 2026 here. 

African Writer
They are open to all genres of literature from Africa and the African Diaspora. They do not allow simultaneous submissions.

Afritondo
According to their website, “Afritondo is a media and publishing platform that aims to connect with and tell the stories of Africans and black minority populations across the globe.” They accept a wide range of work, including manuscript-length work.

Brittle Paper 
Brittle Paper is an online literary magazine for readers of African Literature. They accept the following: “fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, book reviews, essays, literary commentaries, fun listicles, and any writing with a literary bent”. 

Torch Literary Arts
Torch Literary Arts is a nonprofit organization. They publish and promote creative writing by Black women only; you can read more about them here. They publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers. “We are interested in work that challenges and disrupts preconceived notions of what Black women’s contemporary writing should be.” General submissions are accepted for Friday Features only, in which they publish fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and drama (including that accompanied by video or dramatic audio). Send up to 3,500 for prose works, up to 10 pages for drama, or up to 5 poems. Pay is $150. Submissions are accepted on an ongoing basis; you can submit here.

Tagg Magazine
Tagg is a US-based queer women’s publication. Their website has several themes they accept articles on, including personal essays, listicles, dating advice and fashion-related content. Articles are 350-1,000 words long and pay $75-175. They welcome pitches for article ideas. See the pitch guide for contributors here.

Bi Women Quarterly
BWQ features the voices of women “with bi+ sexualities (i.e., bi, pan, fluid, and other non-binary sexualities)” and they see “woman” as a broad category and welcome contributions those who identify as trans, non-binary, cis, etc. They publish articles, creative writing, musings, and more.

KOENING ZINE
They publish art, fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction submissions  primarily by Asians, but they are open to submissions from non-Asians. Their uniting theme is Asian Folklore. Submitters must be over 18.

POETRY SANGO-OTA
We only usually include journals currently open to submissions, but this list is always published on the third Thursday of a given month, and this journal is only open to submissions through the 1st to the 10th of each month, so we are listing it and encouraging you to set a calendar alert for when it reopens on the 1st of the next month. “We are interested in poems with a keen connection to a sense of place, nature, or otherworldly geographies.” They only publish African poets, and pay N2,500 per poem.

The Gay & Lesbian Review
The Gay & Lesbian Review is a bimonthly magazine of history, culture, and politics targeting an educated readership of LGBT people, and their allies that publishes themed features (2,000-4,000 words), reviews, interviews, and departments. They have announced a couple of themed calls, and they also invite suggestions for future themes. 

1. Forgotten History: From a Civil War bromance to a lesbian prison riot
2. The Kink Issue: Alternative sexualities
3. Ethnographic Journeys: LGBT lives in premodern cultures

 Writers can send proposals or complete pieces. They pay for features ($250) and full-length book reviews ($100).

The Acentos Review
The Acentos Review publishes writing, art, music and multigenre work by Latinx writers. They are open to submissions all year long. Details here.

Craft
This respected literary journal is open to creative work from authors of all backgrounds, but they offer free submissions + fast response times to BIPOC and other mis- and underrepresented writers, here. Craft pays $100 for flash and $200 for short fiction and creative nonfiction.

Aloka
They want work by non-native English speakers only – poetry, translations, fiction, and hybrid work. Send up to 5 poems, or up to 2 prose pieces, up to 2,500 words each.

The Lighthouse / Black Girl Times
The tagline of The Lighthouse is, “Cultivating spaces of solidarity and safety for southern Black girls to shine through focused programming and research.” They have an extensive guide for pitching articles, including “We … are always looking for thought-provoking stories and other content from marginalized communities, Black girls, (in particular, but not exclusively) and gender non-conforming people. In addition to story and long-form story pitches and op-eds, they accept photography and original artwork for their online blogging platform, The Black Girl Times, and their monthly newsletter, The Black Girl Times Redux. Also, “Each month, we have an editorial theme board (kind of like the mood boards interior designers use) we post on our social media accounts (@luvblkgrls). The theme board is intended to be an inspiration and provocation of thoughts, ideas and feelings. Your response(s) can be literal or abstract and loose. And again, it might not have anything to do with anything we’ve seen.” Pay is $0.25-$1/word. Pay for art (graphic design, cartoons and photo essays) is $150-1,000.

Screen Door Review
They only publish work by individuals who are Southern and queer. You can learn more about how they define Southern here. They publish flash fiction and poetry.

Emergent Literary
An exciting new literary journal that accepts a wide range of submissions from Black and Brown authors.

Presses/Anthologies 

Butch Bait Anthology
They want art, poetry, fiction, erotica, and photography for this anthology. “Though there’s no formal prompt beyond “butch4butch”, we are going for a historical lesbian zine feel that captures the working-class grit and radical celebration of gnc lesbians seen in the 70s-early aughts publications. Think Set In Stone: Butch on Butch Erotica (2001), Persistent Desire (1994), Dagger On Butch Women (1994), The Little Butch Book (1998), etc.” And, “Subgenre doesn’t matter. Erotica, pulp horror, dead dove, taboo, romance, western, speculative—as long as it features butch4butch, GET CREATIVE!” The call is open to all writers, and “those who identify, align, or find themselves drawn to the prompt ‘butch4butch’…genderqueer, transmasc, transfem, nonbinary, etc: you are wanted and welcome here.”  Please see guidelines for length and other requirements. They pay $10, and the deadline is 1 January 2026.

Tenebrous Press: Your Body is a Fever Dream Anthology
This is a fiction and narrative poetry anthology. “A cosmic body horror anthology from trans and GNC voices, a companion volume to YOUR BODY IS NOT YOUR BODY, and a charity drive all rolled into one.” And, “Only accepting submissions from creators who are: Trans, NB, agender, intersex, GNC, and generally any gender identity other than binary cisgender.” They pay $0.03/word for stories up to 4,000 words; they also accept reprints and art; the deadline is 10^th January 2026. Details here and here. 

Neon Hemlock Press: We’re Here – The Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2025
Neon Hemlock Press publishes work on LGBTQ+ themes. They are now accepting submissions for a reprint anthology for queer speculative fiction published in 2025, up to 17,500 words. The deadline is 31 December 2025. Details here, and here (scroll down) and here.

Àrokò Anthology No.1: Folklore From Africa & The Diaspora
“This anthology is a space for self-identified writers from the African continent and the African diaspora.” They have detailed guidelines, including, “We invite fiction that breathes new life into folklore from Africa and the African Diaspora. Send us stories that draw from folktales, myths, fables, legends, and folkloric figures—whether reimagined, adapted, or wholly invented. We want spirits and tricksters: Anansi and Pomba Gira, Papa Legba and Tokoloshe, La Diablesse and the Soucouyant, Nommo and the Boo Hag. Ancestral whispers in the form of abiku children, duppies, and the lwa. Folklore that remembers and reinvents itself across oceans: hybrid monsters, sacred rivers, haunted crossroads, and living landscapes where the mythic walks alongside the everyday.
We welcome stories rooted in history as much as those that look toward the present and the future. From the epics and oral traditions to colonial-era hauntings and resistance myths, folklore is a living archive, passed down and transformed across generations.” Send stories of 2,000-7,000 words. All proceeds from the anthology will be donated to support survivors of the Darfuri genocide. Payment is a contributor copy. The deadline is 31 December 2025.

Moonstone Arts Center: S/He Speaks 4: Voices of Women, Trans, & Nonbinary Folx 
They are open to essays, poems, and stories from Women, Trans and Nonbinary Folx. They go on to say “Because so much negative policy change has occurred on these issues in recent months, we are especially interested this year in poems and essays that pertain to writers’ personal response to current gender politics.” They include specific information about those policy changes that they hope might inspire or affect an authors writing. It’s not a requirement, but an invitation to write about these topics. They close to submissions on January 5th, 2026. Most of their other opportunities for publication have a fee attached.

The University Of Arkansas Press
The University of Arkansas Press accepts unsolicited proposals for scholarly and trade books on topics related the African American history and culture. You can visit their website here to see the titles they’ve previously published.

aunt lute
A multicultural women’s press. Their priority is to publish work by women, both transgender and cisgender, particularly women of color. We have reviewed them here.

Balestier Press
They are committed to promoting diversity in publishing, with a particular focus on Asia. They accept submissions of a wide variety of creative works including fiction, poetry, short stories, graphic novels, creative nonfiction, memoirs. They are also open to works in translation. Assume rejection if you have not heard from them after three months.

Little Puss Press
A feminist press run by trans women. They are open to general submissions of fiction and non-fiction manuscripts. They are also open to reprint proposals of literary/historical works of significance by transgender authors. They have good distribution, excellent press, and have already published work that has won a major award.

Palimpsest Press
A small press specializing in poetry and other literary works, they only publish Canadian authors. They are open to submissions from authors who identify as BIPOC, Deaf, or Disabled, all year round. 

Arte Público Press 
They focus on publishing literary work by “Hispanic writers”, and they publish work in both English and Spanish, but primarily focus on English work. They also have bilingual children’s and YA book imprint, Piñata Books.

Phoenix
Phoenix is a new speculative imprint launched by Nigerian publisher Ouida Books in collaboration with Nnedi Okorafor and Lọlá Shónẹ́yìn. Phoenix is dedicated to publishing African speculative fiction and fantasy (Africanfuturism and Africanjujuism). You can learn more about it here.

The Black Lawrence Immigrant Writing Series
This opportunity, from Black Lawrence Press, is for immigrants living in the US – for manuscripts of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and hybrid writing. “Poets and authors, at any stage of their careers, who identify as immigrants are welcome to submit a book manuscript of poetry or prose or a hybrid text for consideration. Submissions are accepted year-round. However, selections are made in June and November for a total of two books per year. In addition to publication, marketing, and a standard royalties contract from Black Lawrence Press, authors chosen for the Black Lawrence Immigrant Writing Series will receive a travel stipend of $500, which can be used for book tours or in any manner chosen by the authors.”

North Dakota State University Press: Contemporary Voices of Indigenous Peoples Series
The goal of this series to feature the authentic stories, poetry, and scholarly works of Native Americans, First Nations, Maori, Aborigines, Indians, and more to give voice to contemporary Indigenous peoples. NDSU Press considers book-length manuscripts of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for publication in this series.

Random House Canada
The Canadian arm of Random House changed their submission policy have opened their policy exclusively to LGBTQIA2S+ and BIPOC writers, as well as those from other traditionally underrepresented communities. They are particularly looking for “High quality commercial fiction in the following genres: literary, romance, speculative fiction, historical fiction, and mystery. Please note that we do not currently accept screenplays, stage plays, young adult fiction, children’s fiction, or picture book queries. All non-fiction submissions must be submitted via a literary agent.” They are open to submissions internationally, this is not limited to Canadians.

Tundra Books, Puffin Canada, Penguin Teen Canada
These children and teen focused Canadian imprints are open to direct submissions by underrepresented authors and illustrators only. Authors need not be Canadian.

Monsoon Books
This respected press accepts unsolicited manuscripts with Asian, particularly Southeast Asian, themes. 

Arsenal Pulp Press
A Canadian independent press that publishes a wide variety of work,  prioritizes work by LGBTQ+ and BIPOC authors. We have reviewed them here.

Lily
A small poetry press that publishes work of varying length. Submitting shorter work is free for everyone, but submitting poetry manuscripts is free only for poets who identify as Black. They are always open to these submissions.

Angry Robot
A great science fiction publisher that only accepts direct submissions from Black authors.

Heartdrum
Heartdrum is an imprint of HarperCollins Children’s Books, which is edited by Cynthia Leitich Smith, and is in partnership with We Need Diverse Books. Native and First Nations writers and writer-illustrators are welcome to query her directly via a form on her website. Native and First Nations illustrators are also invited to reach out.

Opportunities/Support/Contests

The Caine Prize for African Writing
This prize is also called the African Booker. It is for published short stories, written by an African writers (who is a national of an African country, or who has a parent who is African by birth or nationality). They have detailed guidelines, including, “The story must have been published in the five years preceding the submissions deadline. For 2026 eligibility, the judges will only consider work published between 27th February 2021 and 27th February 2026.
Entries must be between 3,000 and 10,000 words in length.” Please note, entries must be submitted by the publisher (includes publishers of physical and digital books, literary journals, magazines, and arts-oriented websites) or a third-party institution that is independent of the author. Stories submitted by the author will not be eligible. Genres not eligible for entry include: novels, children’s stories, factual writing, academic essays, plays, poetry, autobiography/biography, and any work that does not constitute a fictional short story. The award is £10,000, and the submission deadline is 27 February 2026 (12:00 GMT).

Meridians: The Elizabeth Alexander Creative Writing Award
Meridians is a literary magazine affiliated with Smith College. This award is for short works – poetry, fiction and non-fiction, and play scripts. “The Elizabeth Alexander Creative Writing Award celebrates an author whose work embodies the lyrically powerful and historically engaged nature of Dr. Alexander’s writing. We aim for this award to highlight different forms of knowledge production that emerge from the artistic, political, and cultural advocacy undertaken by women of color nationally, transnationally, and globally. Works engaging with feminism, race, and transnationalism will be prioritized. Translated works and manuscripts in languages other than English are encouraged as well.” And, “Each year we award two winners: one in Poetry and one in Prose. Each winner will have the opportunity to spend a week-long residency at Meridians at Smith College the following Fall or Spring.” There is also a prize of $500 each for the two winners. The deadline is 31 December 2025. Details here and here

table//FEAST Literary Magazine: The Blossom Contest
This contest is fee-free and only open to BIPOC writers. There will be one winner for poetry or prose. Send up to 5 poems or one piece of fiction or creative nonfiction of up to 3,000 words. The prize is $250, and the deadline is 1 January 2026. (They have other contests too, for women and for writers over 50 years, which have submission fees.)

Discoveries 2026
It is for UK- and Ireland-based unpublished and unrepresented women writers, for a novel-in-progress (adult fiction) – send the first 10,000 words and a synopsis. This prize is run by The Women’s Prize Trust, Audible, Curtis Brown Literary Agency, and Curtis Brown Creative writing school. Apart from a cash prize, the winner also gets literary representation. There are also non-cash prizes for shortlisted and longlisted writers. The prize is £5,000, and the deadline is 12 January 2026. Details here and here.

Foglifter Community Intern
To apply for this internship you must be LGBTQ+ and based in the SF Bay Area. Foglifter is an LGBTQ+ organization that works to celebrate and uplift queer and trans voices in art and literature. They ask that you read their mission statement before applying. They are seeking a community intern to work 1-3 hours per week during their peak season (i.e. when they are open to submissions). The community interns role is to assist the the community managers in the successful planning and execution of social media campaigns. The work they mention the community intern needing to do includes the following: “schedule social media posts on Later, assist in crafting engaging and exciting captions for Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky, and collaborate with the Community Managers to develop content ideas and design for social media campaigns. The Community Intern aggregates ongoing contributor surveys for social media post creation. They also assist in gathering assets/drafting content for our newsletter.”

They are hoping that students in the San Francisco Bay Area with experience and/or interest in communications and social media will apply. They cannot guarantee school credits, but if a student wants those credits, they will work with the institution the student is attending to try and make it happen. They close to applications on January 16th, 2026.

The Maureen Seaton Poetry Prize
Co-sponsored by Wild & Precious Life Series & South Florida Poetry Journal (SoFloPoJo), it will close to submissions after 1,000 submissions have been received (so apologies in advance if the link isn’t working). This contest is open only to LGBTQ+ poets who are 18+. The prize is $500.00. The prize will be paid to one winner, or for collaborative work it will be split between the winners. The judge of this year’s contest is Denise Duhamel. You can only submit one previously unpublished poem that is up to 3 pages in length. 

Paradise Press: Hot Flashes: Flash Fiction Contest
I went back and forth on placing this in the contest section or in the anthology section. It fits in both. The Gay Authors Workshop and Homo Promos are launching this competition: Hot Flashes. In order to submit work you must confirm the following:
“No AI has been used.
The title hasn’t appeared in any publication with an ISBN.
I am on the LGBTQ+ spectrum or identify as a straight ally.”
They are looking for Flash Fiction stories and poems for possible inclusion in the new anthology to be published in April 2026, and the completion has four categories:

1. Under 40 words prose (for poetry – haiku, limerick or clerihew).
2. Under 300 words prose, or, for poetry – sonnet, or other form under 20 lines.
3. Under 600 words prose (poetry under 40 lines).
4. Under 1000 words prose (poetry under 70 lines).

They welcome poetry submissions, but poetry must contain elements of flash fiction, i.e. a Narrative of some kind. There is one prize of £100 for each of the categories, as well as two ‘commendations’. All the work that is prize winning or given commendations will be guaranteed inclusion in the anthology. They close to submissions on January 31st. Please read their full guidelines before submitting.

Ludington Writers: Making Waves
The theme for this special issue is Pride 2026. They are asking poets, fiction, and nonfiction authors, and visual artists to submit works uplifting voices and experiences from the LGBTQ+ community and about it. Even though they use the word uplifting they clarify ““Uplifting” in this context doesn’t necessarily mean we want only happy material. As long as it’s original work that avoids clichés and sentimental language, we want to see it!”. While they are not a paying market overall they will be giving out four $50 awards, to outstanding works chosen by the editorial team. Submissions close on December 31st.

Small Harbor Publishing: Laureate Prize 
Judged by the poet Traci Brimhall, this contest from Small Harbor Press has a 25 dollar fee to enter but they waive that fee for all BIPOC writers (as well as previous finalists for the prize). Harbor Editions will publish 1 book from the contest. Finalists may also be considered for publication. The winner will receive $500 and 20 copies of their book. They close to submissions on January 1st.

Princeton University Press: Global Equity Grants
These grants are for authors of underrepresented groups to support the preparation of works that is already under contract, in production, or published within the last 12 months. Grants range from $500 to $1,000. The grants can be used to cover a wide range of supports including parental/family care, and translation. More details at the source. Applications are considered on a rolling basis.

The Writing Barn Scholarship
The Writing Barn has a small but budding scholarship program available for our programming. Scholarships are awarded on the following criteria: seriousness of purpose, talent and financial need. They also offer specific Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity scholarships for BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, Neurodiverse writers, and writers with disabilities.

People act like you have to know the plot before you begin. Sure. And I also pretend I read the terms and conditions when I click “agree,” but here we are. Most drafts start with me poking at the keyboard like it’s going to hiss, and then suddenly there’s a character, and then another one, and before I know it they’re arguing about soup. No idea why. They just are. And somehow that usually means I’m on the right track.

The fun part of not knowing what you’re writing is how everything becomes… suspiciously alive. You throw in one random detail—like a guy carrying a giant zucchini for reasons unknown—and boom, now the whole paragraph has attitude. When you outline too tightly, everything becomes polite. Overly behaved. Like those kids at birthday parties who won’t eat cake because they’re “saving room for dinner.” Who wants that in fiction?

Half the time confusion works better than planning. It forces you to actually pay attention. When I don’t know what’s coming next, I read every sentence like it’s a cryptic instruction manual written by a sleep-deprived engineer. And somehow my brain goes, “Oh sure, I can figure this out,” right before leading me directly into a wall. But then on the way down I grab some idea I didn’t know I needed, and hey, that counts. That’s basically my writing process. Confusion with a side of accidental trespassing.

Most days I poke the keyboard like it’s a suspicious animal. Then a character shows up, usually dressed wrong for the situation, and before I even blink they’re arguing with some other character who wasn’t invited. It’s chaos. But a fun variety. Like when you order something online and the package shows up containing… absolutely not what you bought, but somehow it’s better.

The whole delight of not knowing what you’re writing is how fast the sentences start mutating. You toss in one weird detail—say, a guy dragging around a suitcase that makes sloshing noises—and suddenly the whole page feels alive in a way you definitely didn’t authorize. Precision could never.

Outlines feel like those “life hack” videos where someone uses a banana to fix a car engine. It looks efficient, sure, but try doing it yourself and suddenly something is on fire. My brain hates neat plans. If I outline too much, the words behave too politely. And polite sentences make me itchy.

Once I tried starting a very serious, grown-up story. You know, the type you imagine wearing a blazer to write. By paragraph two, some character wandered in holding a broken umbrella indoors and lecturing everyone about cloud conspiracies. And honestly? That moment saved the whole thing. Seriousness is overrated. Chaos does cardio.

And yeah, sometimes I write myself directly into a wall. Full speed. No helmet. But I usually find something interesting stuck in the metaphorical drywall—some throwaway detail I typed by accident that ends up steering everything. Didn’t plan it. Didn’t apologize.

People panic about “losing control of the narrative.” Control? Please. There was never control. The rails everyone’s worried about falling off are imaginary, held together by whatever snacks you ate while drafting. Do I question it? No. The universe handed me a ferret. I say thank you.

And the fear of “what if it doesn’t go anywhere?”—that’s adorable. Most stories don’t go anywhere. They wander around like confused tourists, then eventually bump into something worth keeping. That’s the job. The wandering. The bumping. The accidental discoveries you pretend were intentional when someone asks.

Every book you’ve ever loved probably started as some writer muttering, “I have no idea what this is supposed to be.” Confusion is the engine. Precision is the seatbelt. Feel free to leave the seatbelt off sometimes.

So the next time you sit there stressing about structure or tone or whatever your inner grammar warden is yelling about—just stop.

You don’t need a plan.

You don’t need a flashlight.

Sit in the dark a second.

Your eyes figure it out. Eventually.

Or they don’t, and you write something totally unhinged instead, which honestly is even better.

Bio: Sabyasachi Roy is an academic writer, poet, artist, and photographer. His poetry has appeared in The Broken Spine, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review, Dicey Brown, The Potomac, and more. He contributes craft essays to Authors Publish and has a cover image in Sanctuary Asia. His oil paintings have been published in The Hooghly Review. You can follow his writing on Substack here.

If a publisher has closed to submissions unexpectedly, please send us an email at support@authorspublish.com.
Please read the full review, which we link to in the publish name, and carefully consider fit before submitting work. I can not stress enough that you should only submit to presses that are a good fit for your work, and that you should carefully read and follow submissions guidelines before submitting that work. Over the past year we had several presses ask to be de-listed because they were deluged by submissions, even after moving to this format. Still more presses have had to temporarily close to submissions because of an influx of inappropriate submissions.

Vine Leaves Press
Vine Leaves Press is an international press with staff in the United States, Germany, Greece, England, and beyond. They were founded in 2011 as a literary journal and started publishing vignette collections in 2014. Vine Leaves Press publish books in a variety of genres including memoirs, coming of age, literary and multi-genre novels, poetry and short story collections, and reference books. They are open to submissions from December 1st 2025, and close on January 31st, 2026.

Hohm Press
A small print publisher based out of Arizona, Hohm has been around for many years. They are a respected press that has published a number of well-known authors. They generally focus on health and wellness. They are not interested in fiction or short story collections.

becker&mayer! kids
becker&mayer! kids is often abbreviated as b&m!. This is an imprint of The Quarto Publishing Group that focuses on publishing children’s books that focus on portraying varying cultures, races, and abilities. They say this about the imprint, “We believe authenticity is even more important than just visibility. When people read about their own culture, it is often the nuances of the experience that are relatable. Our inspiring children’s list brings representation and positivity to the reading landscape of young readers everywhere.” They publish fiction and nonfiction for children.

Tuttle Publishing
The Tuttle Publishing company was originally founded in 1832 in Vermont. This makes it one of the oldest American publishers still in operation. In 1948, the company established a publishing outpost in Japan, and since then they have become much more focused on producing English-language books about the arts, languages and cultures of Asia. In fact currently Tuttle Publishing is only open to unsolicited submissions of work on “Asia-related topics”. This includes Asian languages, cuisines, martial arts, arts and crafts, Eastern philosophies, etc. Do not submit any work outside of those topics to them. They are not interested in any fiction submissions.

Eclipse
Eclipse is the dark romance focused imprint of Entwined Publishing, which we have reviewed here. This is how they describe the imprint “Eclipse delves into the shadowy realms of dark romance, where love and danger intertwine. We are interested in submissions featuring dark billionaires, mafia kings, biker gangs, and anti-heroes who blur the lines between right and wrong. Your stories should evoke intense emotions, explore forbidden desires, and offer complex, multi-dimensional characters that captivate and challenge readers.”

Headpress
Headpress was established in 1991 although the publishing arm wasn’t active till 1992, according to their FAQ. Headpress focuses on publishing nonfiction. The subject matter they publish varies widely. They say “When Headpress first started, much of this was considered the counterculture. Now it is pop culture.” They publish work on cult film, strange music, pulp literature, fanzines, conspiracy theories, sex and gender, occult and folklore, true crime, etc. It is still run by one of the three founders, David Kerekes.

Bookouture
Bookouture is a digital publisher that was purchased in 2017 by Hachette. Bookouture was extremely successful in their own right. They started out in the UK but they have outposts in a number of countries now. They focus on publishing commercial fiction. They primarily publish women’s fiction, romance, thrillers, and chick lit.

Deep Hearts Jr.
Deep Hearts YA, an imprint of Deep Desires Press, is launching a new sub-imprint called Deep Hearts Jr. Deep Hearts Jr. will focus on publishing middle grade (or MG) books for readers between the ages of 8-12. They will be focusing mostly on publishing LGBTQ+ middle grade fiction, in all genres and sub-genres. The other imprints of the same publisher all focus more on romance. The focus on romance is not necessary for readers of this age. The publishers stress that. “The queer element of a Deep Hearts Jr. book should be present in the main character’s immediate life, which could be an identity they are coming to terms with, they may be in a queer family, or there may be other opportunities for queerness in the character’s life. (Having queer friends is too “distant”; queerness must be immediately present in the character’s life.) Some themes we enjoy are self-empowerment, self-acceptance, or other related messages.”

Bloomsbury Publishing
Bloomsbury Publishing was founded in 1986 in Britain and has since expanded with offices in a number of other countries. They are very established with excellent distribution. They publish a wide range of fiction and nonfiction, but are only open to submissions for their academic imprint. For this imprint they accept textbook and academic proposal forms, including proposal forms for play anthologies and collections, and series proposals.

Hurst
Hurst is a UK-based independent publisher that was founded in 1969. They only publish nonfiction and the core of their list focuses on “African Studies, Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies, South Asian Studies, History, War & Conflict, and International Relations.” Nonfiction work outside of those areas of study are not a good fit for them. You can spend more time with their catalogue here. It is very easy to get a feel for what they publish, and what they do not.

I know from the many emails I receive that this is what readers want more of. Presses open to previously self-published work, and also presses that are open to a wide range of genres, and not a niche.

These presses that are open to range of fiction genres and previously self-published, often use the word independent on their website, and some even use the word traditional. But these sites set my alarm bells off. Every single time I’ve reached out to an editor of one of these sites asking if they are traditional or not, or just requesting additional information, I have not heard back from them. Just to be clear, I ask politely and try to keep the tone as neutral as possible.

Even though they won’t answer the question, I have gotten answers. I have heard from authors and a number of these presses, that they had to pay for editing in order to be published by this press. More than that, they had to pay for editing by an editor directly approved by that press as part of their contract to be published.

You might be wondering if their manuscript was a mess and needed major editing, but the majority of the authors I spoke to all said that their work was previously edited by professional editors. Also, everyone who ended up signing the contract and paying for the edits by the approved editor ended up only receiving minor edits.

I have only a small sample size of authors as sources currently, but if you had this experience, please reach out to support@authorspublish.com. I will keep anything shared with me fully anonymous. If an editor of publisher I’ve reviewed tried to charge you, please email us also.

I have also encountered a press that called themselves traditional yet charged for editing. I talked with their editors about it and everyone ended up on the same page. All this to say I am OK with publishers charging for editing as long as 1) They know this makes them no longer a traditional press (and Authors Publish only reviews traditional presses), and 2) They are upfront about it and disclose it even before work has been submitted.

These presses that don’t disclose that they charge for editing, and are trying to pass themselves off as traditional presses, are doing real harm to authors. Not just in terms of the money they extract for the editing but in the “bait and switch” experience the author has. They think they are submitting to a traditional press and then only at the contract stage do they find out that they are supposed to pay.

It’s very hard to not sign a contract, I know this from exchanging many emails over the years with authors.

I do want to really encourage any author who is offered a contract that forces them to pay for editing to not sign it. It is not a traditional publishing contract, and the way the publisher makes their money is off the author payment, not on selling the book.

Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The 2025 Guide to Manuscript Publishers. She regularly teaches three acclaimed courses on writing and publishing at The Writer’s Workshop at Authors Publish. You can follow her on Facebook here.