A couple of interesting indie publishers featured in Writing Magazine this month.
First is Fledgling Press, a Scottish company that focuses on debut authors writing a variety of fiction including YA. If you’re Scottish too that will help! You should send three chapters and a short synopsis by email and they aim to reply within 6 weeks. If accepted your book will be placed on a longlist for possible publication. Note they do not want sci fi. Full submission details at www.fledglingpress.co.uk/submissions.
The other indie that caught my eye this month is Ghostly Publishing which has been founded by a paranormal investigator, no less! The premise gets even more intriguing as the submission process involves peer review on the site, so you need to register then upload your submission – first three chapters and synopsis – rather than emailing or posting it. There is also a free ‘manuscript checker’ which apparently can instantly score your book to test if it is ready for publication – the closer you get to zero, the better! Take a look at these details on the site to familiarise yourself with the process. As you might expect, Ghostly wants fantasy and sci-fi for child to teen readership.
And finally, if you do buy Writing Magazine this month you’ll find my article on how to interpret your blog stats nestling happily on page 28 under the pun-derful title Stat’s Amazing!
Happy submitting everyone!
Lou Treleaven 
Sadly, the submissions upload on the Ghost site doesn’t appear to work.
Oh dear. I plan to have a try of it myself so I’ll let you know how I get on.
Thanks Lou, it only seems to allow you to actually type in the chapters, word by word !
Hope they get that working – I have passed a link to your blog on to someone who may be interested. Good luck!
Have you tried copying and pasting your text, Nick? The automatic book scoring system looks interesting but it comes up with a ‘fatal error’ when I try it. Maybe they are having some problems!
I’ll give it a try, thanks Lou.
Hi Lou
Needing your advice again. Good news, a small publisher is interested in my picture book. However, the advance seems surprisingly low considering I’m the author and illustrator (£1000 then royalties which vary according to where the book is sold)
I’ve only submitted this book to two publishers (and only one has replied as yet) Should I consider approaching an agent or another publisher or should I go for it to get something published and a foot in the door?
Hi Joanne. Firstly, congratulations on getting an offer! That’s fantastic news! For a small publisher I think the advance is realistic. Personally if you’re happy with everything else in the contract I would jump at the offer. However if you’re not sure, a good tip is to register with the Society of Authors (you are eligible if you have had a book published or have an offer to have a book published). For a small annual fee you have access to their legal bods and they can check a contract for you and make sure everything is above board. You never know, you may hear from the other publisher while you are getting the contract checked out. But this publisher sounds keen, and a keen publisher will hopefully be working hard (with you) to make your book a success. Good luck and let us know how you get on!