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 runner 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. This week the challenge was to tell us why you wrote.

The next contest starts at 9 am PST on Saturday. Next weeks challenge is to write a really good one-liner.

Winner:

Runner Up:

Editor’s Choice:

Submitting your work to full length publishers is a terrifying process partially because you are facing potential rejection and partially because it is not easy to know if the publisher will treat your work fairly. I have written before about how to avoid bad publishers in the article Red Flags.

Sometimes the publisher is new or is unlisted by most of the watchdog sites I recommend visiting in that article. What do you do next?

Googling the publisher can be helpful. However, make sure that you only consider feedback from legitimate sources such as newspapers and established feedback sites. One rant on an author’s website without any proof is not a legitimate source.  A person’s blog has no filter. Make sure that you are not just looking for bad information. Read most of what pops up, particularly if it is about one of the books the publisher has published recently. Reviews of that book can tell you a lot about the quality of the press.

However the most important step is not to go outside the publishing company but to dig deeper into their website. First make sure you have a good first impression. Anyone looking up your book online would probably see their website at one point, and you don’t necessarily want to be associated with something that does not seem professional. It is also important that the website is easy to navigate. Potential readers should find it easy to find your book.

One of the most significant tell tale signs that a publisher is not necessarily going to serve your book well, is if they seem to be more actively seeking new books and new authors more than promoting and supporting the books they already published. If the link to submit your work is hard to find, that is actually a promising sign. It means that the press is making money from their readers rather than from its writers.

Make sure you look to see who their distributor is (unless they are an e-book publisher). The distributors are responsible for getting books into bookstores. If the press you are looking for does not have a distributor it means that they are depending largely on online sales. If they say they are POD that means they print on demand through a service like CreateSpace and do not do print runs, limited or otherwise.

One of the most important things you can do is look at the actual books that the press has published. I like to choose one or two in the genre that my work is in. I look at who wrote the book blurbs. Are they well known? Are there no book blurbs? I also like to look at the covers, if they look professional that is always a good sign. I then look up these books on amazon and goodreads, to see if I can read any reviews of the books.

Sometimes I even buy one of the books. When I do this I never buy the e-book version, I want to see the cover and the quality of the paper and the printing. All these things are important.

I also make sure to read the about us section of the site. I like learning who the editors are (if they list them) and I think it is important to see how long the press has been around. If they have only been around for a short time that can explain why they don’t have a big web presence.

Hopefully these tips will help you feel confident when you find a publisher that has not been reviewed here or elsewhere and you want to know if they might be the right publisher for you.

Fireship Press is looking to publish books that are between 90,000 — 150,000 words in length. They are not interested in manuscripts that fall outside of the genres of Nautical and Historical Fiction and Nonfiction.  However, their new imprint Cortero is open to publishing fantasy with a historical setting, or Alternative history as well as Murder Mysteries with a historical setting.

Send them a query via email first. They do not accept any submissions via post. Include a brief synopsis of the work. For non-fiction books,  also include an outline or detailed chapter list. Do not include a manuscript or manuscript excerpt in your first email query. If they are interested they will request three sample chapters. They prefer that these three chapters be the first three in your novel or non-fiction works. They try to respond to all queries within 2 months.

Fireship Press negotiates contracts on an individual basis. They only offer contracts for manuscripts that are already completed. However it is very important to note that Fireship Press does not provide an editing service, and expect that work to be done by an editor paid for by the author of the book. I think that is an important factor to take into consideration when submitting to them, because editing can be costly.

To learn more visit their website here. To read all the submission guidelines visit this page.

For example, the ghosts in Harry Potter served a lot of purposes that had very little to do with scaring anyone. I like the ghost in Hamlet, because there is such a strong element of metaphor in there, and it interacts so well with the question of Hamlet’s sanity.

Today your prompt is to write a ghost story. It can be a scare your socks of campfire story, or it can play with the conventions of being a ghost. Either way, have fun with this prompt, it is very flexible. If you prefer to write a poem instead of a story, go right ahead.

Happy Writing!

Founded in 2004 at the University of Texas at Austin, Bat City Review is an annual print journal publishing fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and visual art. In its ten year lifetime, this entirely student-run journal has published work by many noteworthy authors whose accolades include a Poet Laureateship of the United States, a Lenin Peace Prize, a National Book Award, a Pulitzer Prize, and a L.A. Times Novel of the Year. With work by these celebrated authors, as well as pieces by unknown writers, Bat City Review has become known as one of the top literary publications of the day.

Each yearly edition of Bat City Review contains work by about 40 authors. They accept submissions from June 1^st through November 1^st, and submitting writers can expect a response in late autumn. All submissions are read by the Bat City editorial staff, as well as the Bat City class, a group of university students learning about the editorial process. With such a large and changing group of readers, Bat City Review doesn’t aim to maintain a particular aesthetic. They publish a wide variety of styles and forms, both traditional and experimental, and you can get a sense of what they publish by reading samples of past issues online.

Fiction writers may submit one short story, novella, or piece of flash fiction of any length. Non-fiction writers may submit one lyric essay, memoir, or interview of any length. Poets may submit up to five poems. Writers in all genres should submit no more than once per submissions period.

Bat City Review accepts submissions online, but not via post or email. They accept simultaneous submissions, but ask that writers immediately withdraw work accepted elsewhere. They don’t accept previously published work.

If you’d like to learn more or submit to Bat City Review, please visit their website at http://www.batcityreview.la.utexas.edu/guidelines.php.