Submissions
SUBMISSIONS ARE CURRENTLY OPEN.
Before submitting your manuscript, please ensure that you have carefully read our About Us / FAQ page and our Change of Service page.
We also strongly recommend reading our writing guide, created by our team - 'Let's Write Right'.
At BLKDOG we believe honesty and integrity is everything. This is a strange time for traditional publishers, with independent publishers, self-publishing and vanity publishers challenging the status quo. New and established authors are understandably scratching their heads trying to work out what is going on and what's a square deal for them and their titles.
Let us say straight away, please do not bother with vanity publishing. There are companies out there who 'love your book', but will need an advance from you (!) to finance it. This is normally in the thousands of pounds/dollars. This is complete nonsense. Their business model is to make a profit from you, rather than book sales, and you'll find plenty of writers on the web lambasting these dishonest companies.
As for self-publishing, we've got a lot of good to say about self-publishing, but it's not for everyone. Many readers are, perhaps unfairly, put off by the idea of writers publishing themselves, and even though many authors put a huge amount of time and cost into polishing their title, self-publishing still suffers form the perceived stigma of a lack of quality control. It is estimated there are over 6,000,000 titles now available on Kindle, and getting noticed is becoming harder and harder.
The truth is (a little publishing secret), most books struggle to sell and it's physical books which tend to make the biggest loss. That's not us being churlish, it's a cold, hard fact - most titles simply don't sell well and we all need to be realistic about this. Publishers that promise great success, book-store signings and movies off the back of your title are not only getting writer's hopes up, but frankly misleading them. These miracles do occasionally happen, but it's not the right mindset to go in with.
Of course, many titles do well, and we'll do our best to work with you to make your title as successful as possible. If you do well, we do well and if we do well, you do well, it's a win-win. We will expect you to be keen and passionate about your work, have a strong social media presence and actively promote yourself too. Readers want to engage with authors, not their publishers.
We don't pay any of our authors an advance, and we certainly never ask for payment from them - ever. Our model is simple, we'll cover the initial costs, then your title will be licensed by us for five years. At any point after this, if for some reason you're not happy, you can take your title back, no problem.
Why work with BLKDOG?
Pros:
We split royalties with our authors 50/50.
We will never ask you for payment (though you will need to contribute to any third party professional edits).
We cover all costs (artwork, formatting, distribution, ISBN allocation etc).
We will help promote and market your book.
Fantastic networking and support from other BLKDOG authors.
Our titles are listed with Nielsen and Bowker and are available to bookshops, third party distributors, libraries and schools.
You have the option to take your title back after five years if you wish.
We are much braver with taking a gamble and accepting titles that traditional publishers won't.
Monthly e-mails from us where you can connect with other BLKDOG writers and critique/support each other and your titles.
Cons:
We don't pay an advance.
You will need to contribute to the initial third party editing cost.
We don't produce audiobooks.
You won't get as much in potential royalties as you would if you self-publish.
Having a publisher means you do not have as much control over your title as self-publishers do.
If you're unhappy for whatever reason (we're sure you won't be), we reserve the right to hold your title for five years.
Interested? Want to submit? Any questions?
Great, get in touch on our contact page and let us know. We will then provide details of where to send your manuscript. Don't be shy!
Basic formatting advice: Double spaced, Times New Roman, 12pt equal margins, Word or Mac equivalent. Don't use tabs as indents.
If you have any questions and would prefer to contact us by Twitter, you can do so by clicking here.