Submission Guidelines

Please send…

· Up to 5000 words of your novel or non-fiction book. 1-2 short stories, up to 5000 words, or 1-6 poems, up to 2500 words.

Please use single spacing and a fairly plain and common font, such as Georgia, Ariel, Verdana, Courier or Times New Roman.

Please (again, but this time with a cherry on top) resist the urge to type it all in italics, bold or Caps. These effects are fine for occasional emphasis, but the main typeface and format should be boring. Anything fancy will detract from your writing and make it harder to read. You want your penmanship to stand out, not your formatting.

·   Synopsis

A brief synopsis of book. There is no word limit, but as a rule, the briefer the better.

For fiction, please introduce your story by telling us the genre/s, location/setting, POV (point of view), narrative style and word count. Then go on to summarise the entire plot, including the main characters and story conclusion.

For non-fiction, please introduce your subject, your motive for writing about it, along with any relevant experience you may have, and word count. Then go on to summarise the book, including any conclusions you arrive at.

For short-story or poetry submissions, please state whether or not your aim is to build an anthology, if so please mention your writing style, any relevant theme and word count. Try to sum up the concept/content of your anthology.

·   Biog

A brief biography, usually written in third person. Say something about who you are as a writer, your individual writing style, any relevant experience or authority on the subject you are writing about and mention anything you have previously had published, along with any writing competitions or awards you may have won. We realise that some of this won’t apply if you are just starting out as a writer. If that is the case, please don’t be discouraged. We all have to start somewhere and Can Write Will Write was specifically created with novice writers in mind.

·   Blurb

I.e. the bit on the back cover that, hopefully, attracts and teases browsers into wanting to buy the book. It should encapsulate the main thrust of your book in just a few effective sentences.

For fiction, don’t reveal any plot spoilers, or you’ll give Amazon reviewers nothing to write about. For example, if you’re writing a whodunit, don’t say whodunit. Otherwise nobody will buy it as they’ll already know whodidit.

If you are unsure, introduce your story and bring up one or two of the main questions that arise from it, while leaving those questions unanswered.

For non-fiction, indicate where the book is leading. Your aim being to encourage readers to read on for validation and explanation of what was understood from the title and introduction.

For short stories and poetry, particularly if submitted as part of an anthology, emphasise any themes, styles and genre.

If we offer to print-publish or ePublish your writing, the title, cover picture and blurb will become the shop window of your book. Your book may be wonderfully written, but if your blurb isn’t of the same standard, most browsers won’t read any further.

·   (Optional) A brief synopsis of your next novel or project. (Why?)

Are we crazy, or what?!?!?! Why on Jupiter would we be asking about your next novel, when you are still working on getting this one right?

Well, if you want to write a novel, either for the experience or as something just for family and friends to read, then it will be fine as a stand-alone. However, if you are interested in getting your work published, then it might be helpful to know something a little more technical about how the world of publishing works. Technically, it’s about making money.

When publishing an unknown author, publishers and/or agents usually work very hard, generally for little or no money, trying to promote you and your novel. As you are probably aware, this is not an easy business to break into, and even harder to reach the sunny heights that most authors aspire to. So publishers and agents want to know that you have more than one novel up your sleeve. Yes, we do realise that it is not easy to type with novels up your sleeves, but trust us on this one, any publisher or agent who is prepared to do the hard slog bit on your behalf, will need to know that you are up for some hard slog of your own.

For this reason, even while you are working on one masterpiece, it is a good idea to show prospective publishers and agents that you already have your next novel planned.

This may be less applicable to non-fiction, short stories and poetry, but if you have an idea of your next writing project it won’t do you any harm to let us know about it.

·   (Optional, but preferred) Your photograph

Publishing with us

With regard to print-publishing, we publish around a dozen books per year, on when something stands out to us as ‘out there’ and unique.

We have far more flexibility when it comes to ePublishing. In this medium we will publish almost any book that we believe to be well written and finished, and with the potential to attract sales.

We welcome your submissions and will respond with honest and constructive advice and support.

For further details contact:

Bennett

 We aim to answer all queries individually so if you haven’t heard from your chosen Can Write Will Write editor within two weeks, please either re-send your query or direct it to another editor’s email address.