The options here for feedback range from $189 to $399. On most of the page itself there’s no mention of how this will effect your odds in terms of submitting to Ethicool, but in the email we have seen the line between the two is very clear. As part of the text proceeding the testimonials you can see that they very clearly state “Our manuscript Assessments have led to several authors being successfully signed, both with other publishing houses and Ethicool. ” There is also this telling testimonial at the bottom of the page.

If you’ve read many of our reviews over the years, you will know that many small publishing houses now offer editorial feedback or a self publishing imprint. While we don’t love this, we still review these publishers (and have had many authors who have had a good experience with them), as long as these publishers don’t re-direct authors from their traditional imprint to their editorial service or self publishing imprint. Most of the publishers we list that offer these services have an official policy in place that states they will not consider for traditional publication, work they have edited. There are clear ethical reasons for these policies.

Traditional Publishing, by definition, should not involve the author paying the publisher with the possible exception of reading fees (I’ve written more about this here). Ethicool is making it clear through their actions that they are not a traditional publisher.

I  am very sorry I missed this earlier, and I don’t recommend working with them, based on this policy.

Ethicool Books is a picture book publisher focused on publishing books aimed at children age 8 and younger. They are still a relatively new press, they were founded in 2020 by a husband and wife team, Teigan Margetts and Stuart French, with the idea of creating children’s books that helps focus on telling stories that help kids understand how they can help change the world. You can learn more about this here. They have sustainable printing practices and participate in 1% for the Planet.

So far they have published about 12 books a year, and they plan to publish more. You can see their back catalogue here.

They have a beautiful website, although it is so extensive it can be a little tricky to navigate.

I first encountered them, because they are distributed through Publishers Group West. They mention on their site that they have extensive international distribution, but I don’t know who their other distributors are, at this point, but because they are based in Australia, it’s a good sign that they have a decent distributor in the US.

They have clear and detailed submission guidelines that they communicate here. along with a list of frequently asked questions where they make it clear that they are open to all authors no matter where they are based.

Please follow their submission guidelines carefully, and only submit if you feel like your work is a good fit. To learn more, go here.

Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The 2023 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.

In terms of short stories, the list of their favorite writers is as follows: “George Saunders, Souvankham Thammavongsa, and E.C. Osondu”. In terms of personal essay, they want work that achieves distance from the subject itself and allows the reader to share a newfound insight with the author. They are not interested in overly sexual work. At first they set aside space for speculative fiction writing but now they appear to publish mostly literary fiction, without genre leanings.

There is a little bit of contradictory information on the site. For example they ask for no flash, but say their lower limit is 650 words. They also mention emailed submissions, but state elsewhere that submissions are only allowed through their submission manager. They also mention being open to two categories, but then only list one. Personally I’d just focus on following the submission guidelines listed here, after reading some of the creative work on the site here.

They print one issue a year that combines their two electronic issues. They pay $100 per piece.

For a submission portal they use Duosuma, which is run by Duotrope. They ask for North American Serial Rights, which revert to the author post publication. They are not interested in previously published work. They ask for a brief cover letter and a short bio in third person.

One of the interesting things about Duosuma as a submission system is that they now allow journals to establish a quota like Submittable, and they close when that quota is reached. However unlike Submittable, Duosuma shows potential submitters how far the journal is from reaching the quota. At the time of writing this review, it is at 20%. That said, they will close when they reach their quota. Please only submit if you feel like your work is a good fit.

Once they publish an authors work, they promote other work by that author in an ongoing way, on social media and through their email list.

To learn more, please visit their submission guidelines on Duosuma after reading what they’ve published in the past here.

Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The 2023 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.

Aristotle is credited with the famous quote, “No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness” and it is true that great art has often emerged from troubled minds, but it is inaccurate to think that authors can’t have one without the other. I absolutely encourage putting your soul into your work, but as a crisis counselor, I’d like to explore a few ways to do that without donating a pound of flesh.

Much of my advice will center around harm reduction, an “approach…focused on kindness, compassion, and respect” (“Ethics and Harm Reduction“, Alberta Health Services). Often used with substance dependence, this is also something applied to anyone who feels that they are in crisis of some kind. There is no doubt that every author, at some point, feels a sense of crisis in the creative process.

Before we explore this topic, I want to be clear that you do not need to wait for a life-altering or career-defining circumstance to practice self-care. In the same way that we are encouraged to get a vaccination and practice health safety measures before flu season hits, feel free to use some of this on as regular a basis as you need.

Here are some fundamental tools for everyday use:

1. Get grounded. Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way advocates writing three pages of stream of consciousness first thing in the morning. You might seek out guided meditation on a site like quietkit.com or give yourself a routine that prepares you for work, such as listening to music or putting on comfortable clothes. There is no right or wrong way to practice this.
2. Name your challenges. If step one is a regular obstacle for you, consider writing down things that stand in the way of what you want to accomplish. Step 2b might include considering whether any of these challenges fall under the categories of cognitive distortions. For an excellent summary of what these are and how they manifest, I recommend Harvard Health’s article, “How to Recognize and Tame Your Cognitive Distortions.”  You might be seeing your work as flawless or hopeless, a common trait of all-or-nothing thinking.  A common affliction is minimizing the good and magnifying the bad.  It’s completely understandable and common to self-doubt and self-criticize, but to quote another truism, “Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.” Diagnose your difficulties and then have enough compassion for yourself to develop a treatment. More on that later.
3. Work on your pacing. Some people can set aside a specific time of day and work wonderfully with a routine. Others cannot work on a schedule for various reasons. It is up to you and it will take some practice to find what works best for you. Also experiment with what goal-setting will look like for you, whether writing exactly 2137 words per day between 8:37 and 10:03 or making daily progress on your work-in-progress or something in between.

With fundamental self-care addressed, let me go into more detail on harm reduction. In my volunteer work with the crisis line, people often feel unsafe in their current state and after talking to them about their main issue, we do a risk assessment. We help them identify if they are at risk of hurting themselves in some way. With writing, this is not such a concrete idea, but perhaps you’ve thought, “I should just scrap this whole thing.  It’s worthless.” Or “I’m never going to make it.  I give up.” These may not seem like self-destructive thoughts, but they’re detrimental.

In harm reduction, we look at ways that we can take something causing us distress and make its influence safer. In the physical aspect, if someone has drawn blood, we ask about caring for the cut or seeking for medical attention. It can be anything that looks after well-being and there are many ways to apply this in any creative venture. Rather than punish yourself for a perceived shortcoming, consider what is making you feel this way and reconsider how it fits into your goals. As the Alberta Health Services states, harm reduction is a matter of kindness and compassion; and that should be the primary goal of any writer’s self-care regimen.

Bio: Kaki Olsen is an author of several genres who aspires to write many more. Since the 2016 publication of her debut novel, Swan and Shadow, she has contributed stories ranging from dragon smugglers to fairy tale sequels to various anthologies and co-authored Miracle on Deck 34 and Other Yuletide Tales. In her spare time, she is an arts reviewer and a volunteer crisis counselor. She lives in northern Massachusetts with her antique piano and her work-in-progress. All of her publications can be found on Amazon.

Dialogue is quite simply a conversation between characters; it is what the characters say to each other. Dialogue is an effective way to move the story forward, enhance the plot, and develop the characters. Dialogue tags are the means to identify who is saying what and how they are saying it.

There is considerable discourse over the use of dialogue tags. Some editors want them used more; others do not want them used at all. Some authors will write pages of dialogue without one identifying feature, other than a new paragraph, to identify who is speaking. This makes it very confusing for the reader. Some writers use the simple tag of “he said” or “she said” and nothing more. Other writers provide a description of how the character is speaking, where the speaker is standing, or any trivia that will progress the story and identify the speaker at the same time. So, which is better? Or does the writer resort to using a combination of dialogue tag formats or no dialogue tags at all?

To tag or not to tag, that is the BIG question, no pun intended. Perhaps, like everything else in writing, and in life itself, it’s best to diversify and use a combination of simple “he said,” “she said,” tags, no tags at all and more descriptive tags, from the simple, “she cried profusely, stumbling to speak through her tears,” to a more detailed descriptive narrative tag that identifies the speaker as it carries the plot forward.

First, it is best to know what types of dialogue tags a writer can use.

• Basic Dialogue Tags – Also called the “said tag,” this is the simplest and most unobtrusive form of dialogue tags. It is the “he said” and “she said” that will help readers stay focused on the dialogue itself and easily identify the speaker. Perfect for everyday conversations. As well as said, there’s tags like replied, answered, asked, and many others that simply place the speaker into the conversation.
• Action Dialogue Tags – These tags help develop an idea of what the character is doing while he/she (or they) is speaking. A vivid picture of the characters and their movements and gestures will enhance the overall scene. Some words that qualify as action tags are: gasped, wheezed, choked, yawned, coughed, and many others.
• Creative Dialogue Tags – As well as identifying the character who is speaking, the creative dialogue tag can show emotion, reinforce body language, add expressive energy to the speaker’s voice.
• Emotional Dialogue Tags – How is the speaker feeling? Is he/she/they happy, sad, angry? Allowing readers into the inner sanctum of a character’s emotional state adds another dimension to the plot development. What are some emotional dialogue tags? Laughed, sighed, sobbed, and the list goes on. Emotional dialogue tags also include the volume of the character’s voice, like whispered, or shouted. This adds an extra layer of emotion and context of what is being said. Emotional dialogue tags also use words to signify the tone of voice, the way the dialogue is conveyed, from sarcastic to serious, like retorted, jeered, lectured and so on.
• Informative Dialogue Tags – Dialogue tags can also be used to share information (like revealed), knowledge (like narrated), ask and answer questions (inquired and explained), offer suggestions and persuade or convince the listeners (implored and coaxed), or provide a discourse that has multiple characters either agreeing or disagreeing (concurred and objected).
• Combination Dialogue Tags – “He said with great effort as his voice was croaking from the dry air that he was breathing in.” The Basic “he said” dialogue tag can be effective combined with a creative dialogue tag that adds some description to enhance the scene.

Of course, when considering the use of dialogue tags, writers must also whether the conversation, the dialogue is outer dialogue, where the character is actually talking to another character, or inner dialogue, where the character is talking to himself/herself/themselves. The type of dialogue would suggest specific dialogue tags that would be best for this discourse. For example, an inner dialogue, or a monologue, may or may not have any use for an emotional dialogue tag. Whereas an outer dialogue would avoid using dialogue tags like: he thought.

You have the dialogue tags; now how do you use them effectively? Well, first and foremost, don’t overuse them as that can be distracting to the reader. Too many he said, and she said will dull the reading enjoyment and may even detract from the overall story. And be careful how one uses descriptive words in a dialogue tag. Words, dialogue words that is, cannot be growled or hissed or any other animalistic sound, unless the tag includes a simile: “He growled like an angry bear.” But, in hindsight, it would be better to write: “His voice roared with pent up anger.” It is better to focus on what dialogue tags might be most effective for each situation and strike a balance between variety and simplicity without adding too much or too little and avoiding contradicting or redundant dialogue tags.

I am a list person and I find it helpful to have a list of dialogue tags handy. If you are writing the short shorts, the flash fiction, it is best to avoid using any dialogue tags as they add to the word count. Let dialogue help to create your characters and move the story along, but also allow the dialogue tags to add that extra dimension of identification of the characters and intensification of the scene. Allow the dialogue and the dialogue tags to show your reader what you want them to know. Use dialogue tags effectively and use wisely.

Emily-Jane Hills Orford is a country writer, living just outside the tiny community of North Gower, Ontario, near the nation’s capital. With degrees in art history, music and Canadian studies, the retired music teacher enjoys the quiet nature of her country home and the inspiration of working at her antique Jane Austen-style spinet desk, feeling quite complete as she writes and stares out the large picture window at the birds and the forest. She writes in several genres, including creative nonfiction, memoir, fantasy, and historical fiction. http://emilyjanebooks.ca