Submission Guidelines

[Andrew Hook]

The aim of Elastic Press is to produce high quality, single-author short story collections and anthologies in a variety of genres with the intention of raising the profile of writers within the independent press and beyond.

Although the preference is to collate previously published material from relatively well-known independent press writers, we also consider submissions from emerging talented authors and have published total unknowns. If the material is astounding then chances are you will be added to our catalogue.

Elastic Press publishes four times per year: on the 1st of February, May, August and November.

As an independent publisher we are not in the position to pay advances to our writers, but our focussed and energetic marketing strategies are designed to target review copies where they are likely to advantage the writer in the best possible way. If you want to be published in an attractive publication which we will do our damndest to promote then we are for you. In addition, you will receive 50% of any profit.

Always send an enquiry letter first (preferably by email) with the following information:

1. a brief introductory biographical note;

2. an overview of the proposed anthology, detailing the genre or thematic structure as appropriate;

3. A list of the proposed contents of the anthology stating where and when the stories have been previously published; any unpublished stories to be marked as such;

4. An estimated word count for each story, and an estimated total word count.

We are more likely to be favourable to your collection if it falls between 70,000 to 90,000 words. Any genre is considered so long as you have a distinctive authorial voice and have something new to say.

We ONLY publish short stories. Please do not send queries relating to the publishing of novellas, novels, poetry, true-life anecdotes or literary criticism. To gauge the quality of our publications buying some of our books in advance might be advantageous (but is not a prerequisite for publication!).

Response time: General enquiries are answered on a daily basis. If we are interested we will then ask for samples of your work. These are usually read and replied to within one calendar month.

Due to the large number of submissions currently being received we have decided to introduce a reading period in order to deal with the backlog and to prioritise our reading time for the future. Please note that our reading period will now be from 1st May to 30th September only, on a yearly basis, and any submissions received outside that time will be returned unread.

Additionally, at the moment we are only seeking submissions from UK-based authors, as we will be publishing two non-UK authors in the near future and our preferred strategy is to market within the UK.

[Andrew Hook]

Just a note to mention that our submission reading period opened again from 1st May. Whilst it's not mentioned on our website yet, please note that for our short story collections we are only reading UK-based authors during this period due to a backlog of non-UK authors waiting publication.

Within the next few days we'll also be opening for submissions for a new themed anthology (open to anyone across the globe). I'll post the details of this here once our website has been updated.