Submission FAQs

Thank you for your interest in publishing with Drollerie Press.

We are extremely pleased with the quality and creativity of the authors who have submitted their stories to us and we appreciate your interest in doing the same. These are the answers to some questions we have received. If your question isn’t answered here, please e-mail us at submissions @ drolleriepress.com.

1. What if my story is longer or shorter than your word count limit?

A. Let us know in your cover letter and explain why the current length is perfect for the work. If we like it well enough, we’ll take it anyway.

2. Why do I have to submit online?

A. Online submissions are easier to manage, easier and faster to review, and are more secure than email. We tried to allow print/postal mail submissions and it didn’t work for us.

3. I already have my cover art/book design/interior font/interior art. I’m afraid electronic submission will mess it up and you won’t get the full effect.

A. We’re pleased you’ve thought about it that much, but please don’t send it that way. Send us your submission in double-spaced 12 pt. Courier with the first line of each paragraph indented (set up your paragraph indent in your document setup before you start, or apply the style after. In Word the first line paragraph indent is set up in FORMAT>PARAGRAPH>INDENTS AND SPACING), and with a forced page-break (in Word, depress the CTRL and ENTER keys at the same time) at the beginning of each chapter. Use no smaller than 1 inch margins.

Do not use the space bar to space anything except for placing one space between sentences. Use double quotes for dialogue and single quotes for a character quoting another character within the dialogue.

Start each chapter on a new page. Include your name, the title of the story, and page number at the top right header of every page. If you do not know how to properly format a header, please find out. This may be some help in formatting your headers: Add Balance. Be sure to include your email address on the first page.

Send your submission in rich text format (RTF).

Do not send your submission formatted in a fancy font or with weird line breaks or strange paragraph spacing. If you use a fancy font and we don’t have that font on our machine, we may not be able to read it. If we have it, we may not like it and that would impact our enjoyment of your story. Simple is best.

Be sure that you have set up your document so that you don’t have to tab to indent the first line of each paragraph, and that you don’t have extraneous lines or breaks between the end of each chapter and the beginning of the next. Use a hard page break between chapters. Format your header within the header area of your document so it will automatically populate your name, page numbers, title, and email address.

4. What about the art?

A. Please send it in a separate file after we accept your manuscript. We’ll discuss the art with you and/or the artist at that time, but accepting your manuscript is no guarantee that we’ll accept the art you’ve chosen for it. We have very stringent art requirements and a very small budget for it. If, however, we do accept it, we will need permission from the artist to use the work in marketing as well as for print and electronic formatted books and it will have to be at least 300 dpi (600 preferred) with a print size of no less than 6 inches wide by 9 inches high (14 inches wide x10 inches high to allow for bleed preferred).

We are not currently open to cover art submissions. Due to the current economic climate, we are providing all of our cover art in-house.

5. Why do I have to provide a cover letter, synopsis and 4 chapters before you’ll read my manuscript? How should I set that up for online submission?

We want to know that you can sell your work to us with the cover letter and synopsis (because if you can sell it to us, you can probably sell it to anyone), and we want to know that your writing fulfills the promise of your cover letter and synopsis.

Put your cover letter, synopsis, and submission in one document. Format the entire thing at 12pt. Courier or Courier New. Name it according to the file naming convention provided on the submissions page and upload the entire document on our online submissions page.

6. My story had all of the elements you talk about on the submissions page, but you didn’t accept it. Why not?

A. There are a number of possibilities.

That last point is important to us. It doesn’t mean you can’t have a member of AARP (for example) as your villain or your hero, but you have to know enough about AARP members to make it realistic.

7. Will you explain why you didn’t accept my story?

Each editor chooses whether or not to provide personal rejections, but most of us do it when we have time. We will be as polite and kind as possible, but we will be honest. If you disagree, please remember that we are professionals and we stand by our opinion, but it is opinion, and they are slippery things. Ask someone you know who will be honest with you what they think of the work, join a critique group or get a writing partner, work on it some more if it needs it, and/or send it to another publisher; they may have a different opinion.

Sometimes, even with a rewrite, a work isn’t right for us. If we do provide a personal rejection, that does not necessarily mean we’d like to see it after you’ve rewritten it. If we do want to see a rewrite, we will very clearly say so in our response.

8. How do I know you received my submission?

A. We no longer acknowledge receipt of submissions by email.  You will receive a notice that your submission went through from our contact form.  If you do not receive that acknowledgment, please e-mail us and let us know. Your submission may have been eaten by the Internet bridge trolls.

9. How long is your turnaround?

We strive to be as quick as possible in the review process. Sometimes we’re actually caught up and might respond within a week. Sometimes it takes us longer. When we first started, we were quite proud of our ability to turn a story around within 4 weeks–sometimes in as little as 24 hours if we were caught up. Right now we’re averaging about 6 months.

10. If you accept my manuscript, do I have to be electronically published? And if yes, why? Do you ever accept a work for print publication only?

A. Yes. No. And here’s why:

We do not accept works for print publication only. If your work is currently available electronically through another publisher and print publication is important to you, you may have to work with them to see if you can get it to print.

11. What exactly do you publish?

A. We publish short stories; short story collections; short story anthologies, with and without included poetry; novellas/novelettes; and novels. We’re exploring non-fiction that addresses our areas of interest. If you have an idea for a project, please let us know.

12. Do you publish poetry collections?

A. We have no firm plans to publish poetry collections at this time, but that may change as we grow.

13. Okay, so why fairy tales?

A. That’s an over-simplification. Alien Dreams is about killer angels. Still Life with Devils contains geomancy. Survive My Fire is set in a complex world with shape-changing and bestial dragons. Death is a major character in Restless Shadows. Atlantis 1999 contains multiple overlapping realities with gilled Atlantean people appearing in modern-day San Francisco. Falling is a futuristic re-imagining of Rapunzel and has no magic nor fairies in it. So, if you have a story that is based on mythic creatures, is a re-telling of a fairytale, a new fairytale, or revisits a legend, we’ll be predisposed to like it. If it’s a space opera or has a serial killer, or it’s a beautiful historical, but it has no concomitant mythic, legendary or fairy tale basis, we may like it, but it’s not for us. If you’re still not sure how to define mythic fiction, take a look at our blog post.

14. Do you publish everything in both print and electronic format?

A. We publish everything in ebook and will negotiate for print rights if it sells a minimum number of ebooks.

15. You say you’re not a vanity publisher. Do you use POD?

A. Yes. POD (Print On Demand) is a style of printing not a kind of publisher. A lot of people conflate the two, which is to the advantage of vanity presses and to the disadvantage of indie presses. Vanity publishers use POD printing so that they don’t have to keep stock on hand and can keep your money in their pockets. Some vanity or self-publishers offer editing services, many do not. Some don’t even read your manuscript. We use POD to fulfill our print orders so we don’t have to keep our funds tied up in printing and warehousing product and can instead focus on developing new works and good authors. We most definitely read and edit, and we don’t have anyone’s money in our pocket. We provide review copies to reviewers, and we offer the industry standard discount to our distributors. The biggest visible difference for authors is that we pay you; you don’t pay us.

16. Are you ever closed to submissions?

A. Yes. Sometimes, things get incredibly busy and we have to put submissions on hold for a short while, but we don’t want “our” book to go to some other publisher whose doors are open because ours were closed. We try to keep the closed period short and for it to occur as infrequently as possible. If we are closed to submissions, we will say so clearly on the submissions page, and will provide an expected date to re-open submissions. We also provide the information to Ralan.

If you provide market information for authors and would like us to contact you when our submissions policies change or we close submissions, please email submissions @ drolleriepress .com, removing the extra spaces, and let us know. We’ll put you on the list to contact.

17. Do you accept simultaneous submissions?

A. Yes. Please let us know in your cover letter that you have submitted elsewhere and inform us within 48 hours, if possible, if it has been accepted elsewhere. If it is accepted elsewhere, you have our sincere congratulations and we hope you’ll submit your next work to us–and that we’ll be faster off the mark with it. Please do not simultaneously submit to us if the other publisher to whom you have submitted your work does NOT accept simultaneous submission. We won’t care, but they might.

18. Do you accept reprints?

A. Rarely. Most of the time a book has reached its market within the first 6 months of release, but we will consider it if the book is truly amazing, if it was accepted by another house but not released for some reason, or if it was not widely distributed.

If this page doesn’t answer your questions, please drop us a note at submissions @ drolleriepress.com. We’d love to hear from you.