Saturday, January 7, 2023

Call for Submissions: Dark Onus Press

 Dark Onus Press logo

Submissions are open January 1st, 2023.
  • We don’t charge reading fees.
  • All submissions are accepted via email: 

info@darkonuspress.com

  • email subject reads: Submission: Genre, Date (format- 1/1/2023)
  • emailed attachments: Send your manuscript in full. We do not read portions or inquire for more portions.
  • We follow a blind submission process- do not include identifiers in the submitted attachments.
  • attachments: Docx, PDF, JPEG/PNG. If you have specific formatting that requires something else, let us know.
  • We do not require cover letters and will not read them. We will ask for your bio and headshot if accepted.
  • We accept new and established authors- do not assume a literary resume gets you in the door. It’s the work.
  • We accept unsolicited manuscripts.
  • We are a s.m.a.l.l. press. Our submission process and deadlines are reflections of submission volume, time constraints, quality, and cost.
Please adhere to specified guidelines. Do not send us manuscripts that are over the page count, unfinished or contain errors. These manuscripts will be rejected outright. What do we mean by errors? If we read the first two pages of a short story and there’s two periods missing, then that manuscript isn’t ready for publication. We aren’t going to throw your book out for a single error, but we will stop reading if we see patterned mistakes.
 
We expect fully edited work- if you feel the need for an editor for your manuscript, seek out professional editorial services prior to submitting to us.
 
We (generally) do not republish work. Your manuscript should be given to us in consideration of it’s first publication. If you have a specific, one-off interest in republishing a book, email us so we can discuss whether or not it’s suitable. If you published a book in the 70’s that you’d like to put out again in the modern day, it’d be something we’d consider under certain circumstances.
 
You will be notified via email if accepted, along with documentation of how to proceed. Please withdraw your work from consideration elsewhere once you’ve agreed to publish with us.
 
Depending on the category of book you’ve been accepted for (ebook or print) you will receive a number of copies of your book for free as part of your publication process. The amount of which is dependent on cost. But 25ish books is our goal.
 
We ask for a 50-100 word Bio and Headshot upon acceptance.
 
Simultaneous submissions are fine.
 
We reserve first North American serial rights for publication of your book- you’re welcome to republish elsewhere at a later time. This means we have the right to be the first entity to publish your book in North America.

General Guidelines:

  • Micro-books. Note- we are only able to produce a small number of printed titles per year. Once we’ve reached this threshold, we will close submissions for printed books. We will still take submissions for ebooks thereafter.
  • Dark-themed, experimental work is our focus, not our hardline. Please check out our imprint online literary magazine Dark Onus Lit to get a sense of our aesthetic sensibilities.
  • What does “experimental work” mean? Work that experiments with form, presentation, style, and character. That doesn’t necessarily mean your series of short stories has to be House of Leaves, but we are more engaged with things we haven’t seen before than things we’ve seen done a million times before with literary exaction.
  • We publish micro-sized books of poetry, flash fiction, short stories, artwork, and hybrid. We also publish poetry collections, as our only full-length category. If you haven’t seen any movement or correspondence regarding your manuscript for two months, please reach out.
Categories
(we accept these categories, but they are not always open for submission. Open or Closed designations indicate what we are currently taking)
  • Poetry (chapbook): up to 30 pages
Status: Open 1.1.23
  • Poetry (full-length): 50-75 pages
Status: Open 1.1.23
  • Flash Fiction (chapbook): up to 30 pages
Status: Open 1.1.23
  • Short Stories (chapbook): 50-75 pages (a full length collection is 120 pages, for reference)
Status: Open 1.1.23
  • Artbook (chapbook) up to 50 pages
Status: Open 1.1.23
 
To clarify we are generally not interested in photography books or children's books.
 
We are interested in comic books, collections of artwork, and hybrid (chapbook): up to 50 pages.

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