Neon Books

 Full details 

Neon Books publishes one or two small, odd books each year: novellas, poetry pamphlets, short story chapbooks, or other esoteric projects. Here’s what you should know if you want to put forward a project for publication.

Before sending in a proposal…

Proposals are welcome from anyone, anywhere in the world and at any stage in their career. You do not need to have publishing credits or a social media following.

However, we ask that you only submit a proposal if you have at some point supported the press. This includes:

• Reading our literary magazine
• Subscribing to our literary magazine
• Making a donation
• Purchasing one of our existing chapbooks

We’d particularly recommend reading a chapbook, as this will give you a clear insight into what we publish.

If you do not want to do any of the above things, but would still like to make a proposal, you can click here to pay a small submission fee instead.

What we can offer

Neon Books is a tiny press with limited resources. To give you an idea of the scale of our press, here are some figures:

• We publish on average one project per year
• Our print runs are usually around 250 copies
• We offer a tiny advance of around £50 + royalties
• The vast majority of our sales are made online, not in bookstores

Before sending in a proposal, please consider whether a very small press is a good fit for your project. We publish work that is intentionally niche. You may wish to seek a larger or more mainstream publisher.

What we’re looking for

We publish weird little books that might not find a home elsewhere. We don’t publish general collections of poetry. All of our projects have a very specific focus or narrative.

This year we’d like to publish something weird, well-crafted, and amusing. We enjoy horror, sci-fi, and speculative writing. We’re open to almost any form, including fiction, poetry, and comics.

Our books are always shorter than a full-length novel or full-length poetry collection.

Responses

We’ll aim to respond to all proposals within six weeks, but please be patient – we usually receive a very large number. We cannot offer feedback on proposals.

If we like your idea and think it could be a fit, we’ll ask to see the full manuscript, so please only submit if you’re relatively close to completing a draft of your project.

How to submit - please see site