Submissions

When we founded ASP in 2010, we did so with a backlog of terrific manuscripts we longed to get into print. As we found our feet, we began soliciting manuscripts from some of our favorite authors, with great results. Word-of-mouth is, of course, a fine way to find excellent writers, but far from the only way. And so, from January 1st-31st 2020, for the first time, we will have an open reading period for unsolicited manuscripts. For this reading period, we are accepting full-length poetry collections and novels. All submissions will go through our submittable (link below) and we ask submitters for a contribution of $10 in order to cover reader's fees and the submittable account.

Manuscripts selected for publication will receive the attentions of ASP's excellent in-house editorial team, the support of the ASP staff in publicity and event booking, and international distribution through The Independent Publishers Group (IPG), ensuring that the books will be available for purchase world-wide.

Here is what you’ll need to know before submitting.

For this, our first open submissions period, we are looking for manuscripts in two categories: full-length poetry collections and novels. We are interested in work that is well-crafted and possessed of a strong, distinctive voice. Before you submit, we suggest you review our current list, to see if your work might be a good fit for us: https://alansquirepublishing.com/

What we are NOT looking for on this round: Short story collections, essay collections, memoirs, and other forms of creative non-fiction. A separate call for submissions in those categories will happen in 2022.

We are only interested in manuscripts that have not been previously published in book form as a whole.

Your submission must include a cover letter with a brief biographical statement and a synopsis of the attached manuscript. If you are submitting a poetry collection, the synopsis should describe for us the arc of the collection, what territory it covers, what light it shines on its subject matter. If you are submitting a novel, the synopsis should include a summary of the plot and central characters, and again, a statement of what makes this particular book a vivid and compelling read.

If individual poems or chapters of the manuscript have previously appeared in magazines or journals, please list those as well.

Your manuscript should be complete: a workable draft that's ready to begin the editorial process.

As for formatting, please do not use any fancy fonts or design embellishments. Keep it simple and readable. Poetry should be single-spaced, with no more than one poem to a page. Novels should be double-spaced for better readability.

Please remember that while we are ambitious, we are also a small press. This means that should we select your work, you need to be able and willing to help us sell it by giving public readings, and by participating in PR efforts such as print and radio interviews and blog appearances. If you’re a new or first-time author we can coach you on those fronts and provide a lot of support. But you have to be willing to dive in and do it.

Also, we can only publish three to six books per year, and therefore have to be highly selective. It may take us up to four months to review your entry, and, if we decide not to accept your work, we may not be able to provide much feedback, if any. We hope to improve our response time as we grow.

We are currently looking for manuscripts to publish in 2022.

All submissions will go through submittable.

Please note: We do not and will most likely never accept submissions for our Legacy Series. These titles are curated in-house and considered only after solicitation.