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 title, 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.

Second Sky
Second Sky is a brand new Science Fiction and Fantasy imprint of Bookouture, which is an established digital publisher of commercial fiction, and an imprint of Hachette UK. We don’t review publishers till they have been been actively publishing for a year, but we make exceptions for imprints, as there is already an established parent company attached.

Roxane Gay Books
Roxane Gay Books is a new imprint of Grove Atlantic. Roxane Gay has written about this new imprint here. Roxane Gay is the award-winning and bestselling author of a number of books, including Hunger and Bad Feminist. She’s a respected essayist, professor of writing, and one of the original co-founders of PANK. Their current reading period will close to submissions on October 16th, 2024.

Entwined Publishing
The Totally Entwined Group is an eBook, audiobook, and print publisher that was successful in its own right, before being purchased by the Bonnier Publishing group. There have been some shifts in focus since Bonnier purchased it in 2015 but the group still has a mostly good reputation. For a long time its focus was on it’s two flagship established imprints – Pride and Totally Bound. They later added a third imprint focused on YA and New Adult books called Finch. As of October 1st 2024, they seem to have moved away from all three imprints, and their original name.  They have now rebranded as Entwined Publishing. Now they have eight imprints, all with brand new names. The current eight imprints are Epic (Young/New Adult), Entice (Contemporary), Eclipse (Dark Romance), Enchant (Romantasy – which is to say romance + fantasy), Eternal (Paranormal), Echoes (Historical) and Expanse (Science Fiction). All imprints have additional guidelines and preferences. Please carefully review the appropriate imprints page before submitting.

Flux 
Flux is an imprint of North Star Editions that publishes exclusively young adult fiction. Their motto is “Where Young Adult is a Point of View, not a Reading Level”. Most of the books they publish focus on the older end of the young adult market. They publish edgier, darker stuff, than other young adult publishers. They publish all sub-genres of young adult from realistic life stories to sci fi. They are established, have good distribution, and have published many books that have sold well. They have three open reading periods a year, including October to November.

Jolly Fish Press 
Jolly Fish Press was started in 2012. They are based out of Provo, Utah. Their authors have won numerous awards. They initially published a wide range of genres for adults, children, and young adults. They are now part of North Star Editions and like their sister imprint Flux, are only open to submissions three times a year, including October to November.

Orison Books
They publish spiritually-engaged poetry, fiction, and nonfiction of exceptional literary merit. They are a respected small press that has had work featured in many major publications. During the month of October they are open to general fiction and nonfiction submissions, as well as anthology proposals. They also run a number of contests in different genres, but a fee is attached to these contests, so we do not list them. There is no fee attached to the October submission period, but they do accept optional donations, but they do not impact their decisions/the outcome.

Holiday House
Holiday House is an established and reputable children’s book publishers. Holiday House was founded in 1935. They publish picture books as well as books aimed at children grades 1-3, grades 4-6, and grades 7 and up. They are based out of New York City. They have published many well-known books and authors, including Kenneth Grahame. The books that they have published have won numerous respected awards and honors.

Nourish
Nourish is an imprint of Watkins Publishing, which was established in 1893. It is a UK based press with good distribution through Penguin Random House. Nourish focuses on publishing work related to “food and drink”, whereas Watkins as a whole focuses on “mind, body & spirit”. Watkins Publishing is not currently open to submissions according to its separate submission guidelines page here, but Nourish is, according to their submission guidelines.

Storm Publishing
Storm Publishing was founded in 2022 by Oliver Rhodes, the founder of Bookouture. They published their first book in the spring of 2023 and Rhodes brought a number of Bookouture staff members over to Storm with him. Storm Publishing focuses on publishing adult fiction including thrillers and crime fiction, historical fiction, romance, women’s fiction and science fiction and fantasy. You can read more about the launch of Storm Publishing here. There is a lot of overlap in the two companies, in that both focus on digital- first publishing and have similar approaches to sales.

Blue Snake Books
Blue Snake Books is an imprint of North Atlantic Book Company. You can see our review of North Atlantic Book Company here. Blue Snake Books, was founded in 2005. Since the start they have focused on martial arts. They break their catalog down in terms of type of martial art, covering Aikido, Baguazhang, Capoeira, Chinese martial arts, Japanese martial arts, Jiu-jitsu & Judo, Karate & Tae Kwon Do, Krav Maga, Muay Thai & Kickboxing, Qigong (Ch’i Gung), Taijiquan (T’ai Chi), and Xingiquan.

Now through October 20, Penstricken is seeking submissions for their first issue, scheduled for publication this winter.

Poets may submit up to five poems, 40 lines or fewer each. Penstricken is looking for poems that tell a clear story: “Don’t just give us beautiful words (though do give us beautiful words). Give us characters.”

Authors of fiction may submit stories up to 5,000 words. Stories under 1,000 words will need to be exceptional to be published. They accept all genres of fiction, though they do aim to keep the journal “family-friendly”: “We are unlikely to accept anything with excessive graphic imagery or bad language.” They are also looking for stories with a clear plot, and a well-defined beginning, middle, and end.

Penstricken also accepts articles about writing. Authors may submit articles with writing advice or publishing tips, 1,000 to 2,000 words. These can also be personal essays, but they should offer some sort of practical advice.

Penstricken is especially interested in receiving submissions from unpublished or new authors. Submitting authors can expect a response within eight to twelve weeks.

Penstricken accepts submissions via email, not online or by post. They accept simultaneous submissions but ask that authors withdraw writing published elsewhere. They do not accept previously published work, or writing that has been generated by AI.

Penstricken only accepts submissions that follow the guidelines they’ve posted online. Please read these guidelines in full before submitting.

If you would like to learn more or submit to Penstricken, please visit their website here. 

Recently, I was looking up authors who had contributed short stories to an anthology of South Asian SFF. As a fan of the genre and an Indian, it’s always exciting to find stories written by my people. So I Googled their names, hoping to read more of their stuff.

Unfortunately, many of them didn’t have an online presence. Some had only an X (formerly Twitter) or Instagram profile, neither of which I could access because I don’t have accounts on those platforms. Sometimes their bios listed places they’d been published, but they had not linked to those pieces. If only they had a website where I could get in touch or read more!

After the downfall of X, the earliest users of the internet have been reiterating how important it is to have a website of one’s own, the disappearance of which is not dependent on the whims or financial status of a major corporation. Users, too, are moving away from these platforms, because of the aforementioned downfall, privacy issues, and the proliferation of AI-generated content.

With people no longer concentrated on a single platform, it’s become increasingly important to blow the dust off our old blogs–or start a brand new one. For authors, a website can do so much more than a social media profile can.

Consider the website of the prolific fantasy author Marie Brennan. I’d loved her series, The Memoirs of Lady Trent, and upon finishing it, immediately looked her up online to see if she had written more stuff—and she had.

On her website, I found links to more of her books, many of which I added to my to-read list, as well as a page linking to all the short fiction and poetry she had published in magazines over the years. I subscribed to her blog via email, and now I get informed every time she makes a new post on her blog. I don’t need to sign up for any social media or follow her across half a dozen platforms to stay in touch; I’ve also been able to fan-email her directly, corresponding a few times.

Brennan has published very little original fiction directly on her blog. Instead, her posts act as a place for her to make announcements about the essays she posts for her patrons, new publications, award nominations, books read, and so on.

If the authors who’d contributed to the anthology had a similar presence, I’d still be busy reading their work and sending them fan email instead of entering keywords to find even their social media profiles (which becomes more difficult when they have commonly-found names and/or surnames). Author websites like Brennan’s are a godsend for readers who have loved your work and want to read more of it!

If you already have a website, or once you have it set up with the basics—an About page, links to your published pieces and Patreon/Ko-Fi/Buy Me a Coffee page—how do you reach readers?

Write for Other Publications

One way of bringing more readers to your website—and from there, to your published work—is to write for other websites and magazines. This is a common strategy used by freelance writers, especially beginners. When you write for other platforms, you have the opportunity to share the link to your website in your bio (instead of simply listing the places you’ve been published).

For example, I primarily publish articles and essays in online magazines. Every time I submit a piece, I also share a link to my blog, using which readers can and have gotten in touch about something I wrote elsewhere. My stats dashboard shows how, every once in a while, an article published here or in another magazine brought a reader to my site, who then went on to read many of my blog posts or explored my portfolio.

Write Regularly on Your Own Blog

Another strategy is to blog regularly, especially if you host it on platforms like WordPress, whose tagging and recommendations system brings more readers to your blog. The caveat is that you have to write regularly—one post every weekday, for example, is good. (I’d recommend not posting more frequently than that, since a blog reader isn’t seeking the same frequency of content that’s common on platforms like TikTok or X).

To get started, why not take up a 30-day challenge? For example, every November, many bloggers participate in National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) instead of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). You can also participate in the #100DaysToOffload challenge, in which you must write 100 posts in one year.

Bloggers usually work in a community and often in collaboration, reading and spreading love of each other’s posts, so participating in such an event can not only help you find more readers but also fellow writers—you’ll be able to practice writing openly and get feedback.

What Can You Write About?

For Other Publications

Authors know a lot about writing, which is one topic to get you started when writing for other publications (here’s a list of places that publish writing about writing). We also read a lot, so writing everything from personal essays about books to literary criticism is also something you can explore when pitching to magazines.

Depending on the genre and topic you’re working on, you also might know a lot about, say, the history of female war correspondents, new developments in neuroscience, or how gemstones form. The research you do for your writing can be used not only to tell fictional stories, but also inform readers who are interested in reading about science, history, philosophy and fascinating people. There are many magazines who cater to such readers and by writing for them—and then mentioning your book and linking to your website in the bio—you can increase the chances that someone who loved your fact-based article on the history of spices will also want to read your novel on the same.

On Your Blog

The biggest benefit of writing on your own website is that there are no rules. You don’t need to follow any conventions or a schedule. You can write about a book you read recently, or you can write about how your novel is shaping up.

In his book Show Your Work!, Austin Kleon builds on the suggestion that people love to see an artist at work. When people watch a project being built over time, they feel more connected to it. Each blog post, therefore, is an opportunity to give readers an update on how the book is going, how you landed a piece in that new publication, what your research process for that historical story you wrote was like, and so on.

These glimpses into the process feel especially precious amidst the flood of AI-generated content these days—readers get to see the love and effort you are putting into a book, and many are striving to support writers and artists through patronage to fight against the AI takeover.

In addition to sharing glimpses of your own work, you can also support other writers by blogging about their work, interviewing them on your website (while they interview you on theirs) and so on. When you own the website, the possibilities are endless.

And you don’t need any technical know-how or a fancy logo (I have neither). You can get set up in 10 minutes on WordPress, Bear, Pika, or any of the dozens of options listed here. In most cases, you don’t have to pay for the service or the domain.

To give you some inspiration, here are some more examples of authors who are successfully using their websites to connect with readers:

1. Austin Kleon
2. Chuck Wendig
3. Alec Nevala-Lee
4. Naomi Kritzer
5. Oliver Burkeman
6. Steven Pressfield

“Make stuff you love and talk about stuff you love and you’ll attract people who love that kind of stuff. It’s that simple.”
― Austin Kleon, Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered

Bio: Ratika Deshpande (she/her) just finished her free, online book on the art, craft and business of writing. You can support the project here.