Submissions Guide
We are currently accepting submissions in all categories.
Castlegreen Publishing is a fully open source publishing organisation. We can accept text submissions in a wide variety of formats including LaTeX, word processing documents, rich text format, scrivener projects etc. However some of these are much easier to work with than others. The form we receive submissions in won’t necessarily be the one that we output it in.
General Guidance on Submissions
- Don’t send in unfinished work. Ideally you’ll have had time to reflect on your draft after having finished and re-read it yourself before sending us the second (or a subsequent) draft.
- Send in original work. We won’t publish anything that we think might have been plagiarised. If you still have the rights, then we’re happy to re-print. However, we’ll need to check with the previous publisher.
- Only send in one piece at a time. This allows us to give everyone a fair crack at being read. No harm in sending us more when we’ve written back about previous submissions.
- Tell us about your piece in the covering email. Use the subject line to tag it [Poetry/Novel/Short Fiction/Non-Fiction]. Give us a feel for the sort of work it is. Genre, whether it has a message, is it part of a series, and anything else that you think may be relevant.
- Give us a synopsis if it is long (i.e. over 5k words) then please send in the first few thousand words, a synopsis of the whole story and the last chapter.
- Include a short author bio. We like to know who you are, and if you’ve previously had anything published that would be good to know. It doesn’t matter whether or not you’ve been published before, we’re looking for interesting material.
Poetry
We will publish poetry in anthologies, however unless you have enough poetry to fill a whole one this could take a while. Send up to 40 lines worth of poetry as a single submission, which can be accompanied by any notes or gloss that you would like to have published with the story.
If you have any unusual layout for your poetry then they may be best submitted as a PDF, we won’t edit poetry so all we need to be able to do is read it initially.
Short Fiction
Short fiction of less than 7.5k words will be published in anthologies with similar themes. Send in the complete story with a covering email as indicated above.
Longer Fiction
Between 7.5k to around 20k words will be published as stand alone ebooks, unless there are several related stories from the same author or group. These should be submitted as a synopsis accompanied by the first 2-3 chapters/sections and the ending. If we like that then we will look for the whole story before making a final decision on whether or not to accept it for publication.
Novels
These should be submitted as a synopsis accompanied by the first 2-3 chapters and the ending. If we like that then we will look for the whole story before making a final decision on whether or not to accept it for publication.
Non-Fiction
We are happy to accept non-fiction works as well as fiction. Submission guidelines for these are the same as for fiction depending on the length of the piece. If your non-fiction is illustrated or heavily dependent on diagrams then please count each picture/diagram as if it were equivalent to 250 words when working out the length.
In addition to the synopsis please include the table of contents for the book. In your author bio include details of how you came to your expertise on the subject matter of the book.
Where to send submissions
We only accept submissions by email. You should attach your work to a plain text email and send it to submit@castlegreen.org.uk.
Do not zip or otherwise compress the file as the virus scanner will simply delete the attachment.
If you have not had an acknowledgement within two weeks then please email the editor. We expect to let you know whether or not we like your work within four weeks.