Need Recommendations for UK publishers

[Captain Campion]

Anyone have a good recommendation (or 2) for UK-based Science Fiction publishers (particularly with the 'military' sub-genre)? Someone like Baen but focused on the UK market.

Obviously I'm searching for myself via various avenues, but I'm wondering if any of this board's many UK residents have any experience or info they'd care to share.

Thanks in advance.

[Ian Whates]

Various publishing houses have authors who are writing or have written military SF, but there is no real Baen equivalent here in the UK. Closest would be Games Workshop's Black Linrary, but they're only interested in work set within the Warhammer 40K universe.

I'm afraid otherwise it's the normal route of persuading an agent to take you on and then having them pitch the book to a publisher.

Good luck, in any case.

[Anne Lyle]

You mean a publisher that accepts unsolicited submissions? I don't know of any offhand, though Penguin UK have a limited "open season" at the moment, until the end of October:

Penguin Books - About Penguin: Frequently asked questions

Good luck!

[Tirellan]

I'm currently reading 'Veteran' by Gavin Smith which I would reckon to be military SF and is published by Gollancz

[Anne Lyle]

Gollancz are great - but sadly their list is pretty full at the moment (IIRC, until 2015, according to senior editor Jo Fletcher when she was on a panel at FantasyCon)

Also, I suspect they aren't open to unagented submissions. The days of the slushpile are more or less over...

[rdenning]

Almost all publishers in ANY genre have closed lists and only accept submissions via agents.
Get hold of the Writers and Artists Yearbook and go through that. You will find a few.
THere was a list somewhere on the internet called something like 'Publishers who accept submissions' or something like that. Worth a google search.

[Tirellan]

The thing is that there are some publishers who you can get your work into without an agent, but how many of them actually buy unagented work?

NB: Angry Robot are having an unagented subs month in March

[Anne Lyle]

Originally Posted by Tirellan

The thing is that there are some publishers who you can get your work into without an agent, but how many of them actually buy unagented work?

If you can get a publisher interested in your work, it is much easier to get an agent. Earlier this month I queried an agent by email and stated up front, even before the book pitch, that I had had a request for the full ms from a publisher (one whom I knew he had worked with in the past, at that). Ninety minutes later I had a request for a partial! Of course it may all still fall through - but OTOH I could soon have an agent and a book contract...