Submissions

**NEW**

Enter your submission for a chance at a $1000 prize and a publishing contract from Poisoned Pen Press. Click here for details!

 

Dear Writers and Agents,
We strongly urge you to read and follow our submission guidelines. Following our guidelines indicates to us that you are willing and able to work collaboratively with our press. We’re also running several months behind right now. Please consider this before submitting your query.

Thank you,
The editorial staff

We do not accept paper correspondence. E-mail queries and submissions to submissions@poisonedpenpress.com.

STEP 1: DECIDE IF WE’RE A GOOD FIT

Before submitting to us, use the following caveats, themes, and evaluation criteria to decide if our press is a good match for your manuscript.

Caveats

Due to the high volume of submissions and to marketing realities, we have some restrictions.

  • We do not consider simultaneous submissions.
  • We do not publish nonfiction, including true crime and autobiography.
  • We consider works between 60,000-90,000 words.
  • We do not consider self-published or Print-On-Demand (POD) writers.
  • We seldom consider writers who have been previously published in the mystery genre.
  • We seldom consider writers living outside the USA (because of the high cost of marketing and promotion).
  • We do not publish short stories or collections.

Themes

We almost never consider manuscripts which use the following themes as the central focus of the story:

  • Incest of any kind.
  • Murder of children; child abuse.
  • Abuse when it’s a pivotal point or supplied motivation all by itself.
  • Serial killers whose point of views are part of the narrative.
  • Serial killings or psychopathologies that depend on exceptional gore or weird twists.
  • Drugs, including drug abuse and/or smuggling of illegal substances.
  • Vampires, witches, werewolves, paranormals, aliens, future realities, and New Age psychics as protagonists.
  • Thrillers. We define thriller as a duel or escalating contest between two characters or groups. Thrillers usually include global stakes and a world stage of conspiracies, espionage, and intelligence such as CIA, MI5, NSA, presidents and high government officials, military force or technologies, international drug rings, terrorists, or mafia. A “soft thriller” may interest us if the story is tightly contained and local, not political or global; for example, a jewel robbery, theft of a painting, or action packed into a small location among its residents.

Evaluation Criteria

  • Excellence in writing.
  • Originality.
  • Plotting.
  • Voice.
  • Setting.
  • Character.
  • Dialogue.

STEP 2: EMAIL YOUR QUERY

If you decide we’re the right press for you, write a single-page query that consists of a short paragraph introducing your book and a short bio that includes your publication history and states whether you have an agent. Be sure to include your full name, email, and physical address. Do not include excerpts from your manuscript.

  • Send your query in the body of an e-mail (NOT AS AN ATTACHMENT). Do not attach full or partial manuscripts or any other marketing materials. All attachments to initial queries will be disregarded.
  • Your query should give us a clear sense of your writing ability. Spend some time on it. If your query is poorly written or contains grammatical/mechanical errors, we will assume your manuscript is the same way and will not request it.
  • Email the query to the submissions coordinator at submissions@poisonedpenpress.com. Queries sent to other email addresses will not be read.

STEP 3:  EMAIL YOUR SUBMISSION

If your query is successful, we will request your synopsis and full manuscript. If we request your manuscript and synopsis, reply with an e-mail stating that this is an exclusive submission. Attach your 1-2 page synopsis and the full manuscript as two separate MS WORD (doc/ docx) or RTF documents. See the guidelines below about writing and formatting your synopsis and manuscript. We only consider submissions that are a response to an invitation from us. We cannot accept submissions that are missing the exclusivity statement, synopsis, or full manuscript.

 

Writing and Formatting Your Synopsis

Writing and Formatting Your Manuscript

Poisoned Pen Press Style Sheet

Need to Reach Us?

Email  all correspondence regarding submissions to submissions@poisonedpenpress.com
If you do not receive an e-mail answer to your query within a month, please check with us using the address listed above.
Inquiries through regular mail will not be read.