But first, a bit about our contest series.

Every week we are going to have a contest on our Facebook Page. The contests will change from week to week, but the winners will always be published in the magazine. The contest winner and the runners up are chosen by a voting system, and then the editors of Authors Publish will select several additional entries from the rest to be the Editor’s Choice winners.

Below are all the winners of this week’s contest. Their challenge was to submit the title of a memoir. There were two winners this week.

Winner:

Editor’s Choice:

Next week’s contest starts at 9 a.m. on Saturday and runs till 9 a.m. on Monday morning.

Shotgun Honey is an online literary journal that has very specific content. They publish only fiction that is under 700 words in length and is in the genre of crime fiction. Within that genre, they like hard-boiled and noir fiction the best. Think of authors like Hammet and Chandler. Although they will accept general crime fiction as long as the writing is tight.

The writing they publish on the site is generally well edited with an engaging plot and peppered with plenty of dialogue.

Because Shotgun Honey has such a specific area of interest, it is easy to tell just by reading their guidelines and maybe a piece or two if you have something they might be interested in.  Or you can even use their guidelines as a prompt to write something new and compelling.

Specific guidelines narrow the field of submitters and submissions, and because of this Shotgun Honey has a rather high acceptance rate. They accept over a quarter of the work that is submitted to them.

If you submit your work to them, you cannot submit it anywhere else at the same time, which works because they respond to most submissions within a month. You can only submit to them through their own submission manager, which is a simple system.

They do not accept reprints and your work should not have appeared anywhere online in the last year, even on your personal website.

If you like the crime genre it is worth submitting to Shotgun Honey. They might publish a lot of work and perhaps their website could use a bit of a formatting update, but they do a good job publishing compelling crime-focused flash fiction.  To learn more, visit their website here: http://shotgunhoney.net/submissions

This article is all about how to avoid signing a book contract with the wrong publisher. It is hard to find good publishers, and it involves a lot of research just to find a legitimate publisher that accepts work if you do not have an agent. However, there are great options out there, particularly for genre writers. Although Authors Publish reviews one publisher a week, we want to make sure you know what to avoid when looking for publishers on your own.

The first thing you should do when considering submitting to a specific publisher is to do research. We used to direct readers to Preditors & Editors a website that was devoted to listing publishers, agents, and book distributors. However for the past years their information became increasingly out of date with few updates even for major publishers. About six months ago they officially pulled their content offline and are looking for a new individual to take over. They still run reader polls but those are unreliable and should be avoided.

Instead I recommend using the index of agents, publishers, and others at Absolute Writes. A lot of speculation occurs in the forum, so take unverified information with a grain of salt. But there is lots of good legitimate information. Although not all of it is up to date. Absolute Writes is my primary research source when considering which publisher to review.

The site Writer Beware, also contains a lot of  information. They have a lot of detailed information as well as this helpful list. Although they cover a lot fewer publishers than the Absolute Writes Water Cooler forum.

This may seem obvious to most, but no legitimate traditional* press will ever charge you money. If they charge you money, they are a vanity or assisted publishing company — there is no way around that

A good way to spot a vanity publisher is to look for the word “packages.” It is not that all self-publishing should be avoided, but you should know what you are getting into. Even in the world of assisted publishing there are reputable publishers and disreputable ones.

Another thing to look for includes publishers that are forward about how much they pay their authors in terms of royalties. If they are hiding this the amount of royalties, the pay could be minimal.

Preditors & Editors, Writers Beware, and Absolute Writes sometimes don’t list publishers or their listings are not up to date. If you don’t know very much about the company or feel as if your information is out of date, Google the company name. It sounds so simple, but I have been shocked by what I have found by doing this. Sometimes you will find lawsuits or big newspaper articles about what a company has done that was never reported on any of the literary watchdog sites.

I am not telling you all of this to scare you, but to help you protect your writing. You should be confident when submitting that your work will go to the right publisher. Research helps reinforce that confidence.

I wrote this follow up article that focuses specifically on evaluating a companies website based on the information that is there. If you come across a publisher where you can’t find much about them online you can still get a better perspective on if you should submit to them or not.

*Some established non-profit poetry presses charge reading fees, but have no other fees attached. Other respected literary presses have also started charging reading fees. We have a list of some of these charging publishers here.

Beachwalk Press is an independent publisher that was started in 2011 by Pamela Tyner. They largely publish romantic eBooks, but some of their books have been released in print as well. Most of the books they publish are on the sensual side. They are open to romances in all sub genres except for young adult romances.

Beachwalk Press has well-chosen covers, and the press advertises their books and sends out a number of review copies each time a new book is released. The royalties amount to 45% of the cover price for eBook sales originating from their website. For other retail distributors, they pay 45% of net sales. Royalties are distributed quarterly.

Their goal is to publish books within 6 months of signing the contract, and from what I have read they have so far not had an issue of meeting that goal. All manuscripts are edited by one of Beachwalk’s editors after the contract is signed.

The About Us section of the site is worth reading, as it lists the genre preferences of each of the four editors at Beachwalk. Information like that can be very helpful when you are submitting your book. That section also lists the individual editor’s email addresses so that if you have any specific questions about what you read, you can email them directly.

Submissions are only accepted through email. Submissions can be no less than 15,000 words and no more than 75,000 words. They try to respond to all submissions within three months. The subgenre’s of romance they publish include BDSM, Contemporary Romance, Fantasy, Futuristic/Sci-fi, Gay/Lesbian, Historical, Interracial, May-December Romance, Meage, Paranormal, Suspense, and Time Travel.

They are open to re-publishing previously published books as long as you can verify that you hold exclusive rights to the work. If you were to sign with them, they would hold the electronic rights to publishing your book for three years.

To learn more about Beachwalk or to submit to them, visit their website here.

In the TV show Fringe, one of the main characters, Walter, was a mad scientist. He had invented and done many terrible things. However, he was one of the protagonists of the TV show, and one of its most beloved characters. He was so compelling because he managed to be both intelligent and helpless, and in turn he was both witty and witless because part of his brain was missing.

This is your turn to create a mad scientist. Your character can behave in any way you desire and you can craft all the details. The only thing that has to be true is that your main character must be a mad scientist. This prompt is mostly a character study, so the plot is not as important as the creation of the character, so really focus on creating a compelling mad scientist.

Happy Writing!