Polymancer Studios Inc.: Submissions

Polymancer Studios – Publishing: Submissions are open.

  We are currently accepting submissions for our 2010 lineup under our Imprint. Our guidelines for submission are below. Please feel free to read them at your leisure.

  We accept inquiries and submissions from new, unpublished writer and authors as well as from those who are already established and known for their works. Everyone is welcome!

  We do, however, recommend that all of those who plan to submit something to us — read over the guidelines below; especially those detailing how we wish the manuscript formatted. Whether or not we accept your submission will depend on strict adherence to the guidelines, as well as on the quality of the story itself.

  We will consider previously published works only if the author exclusively holds the rights.

Submission Guidelines

LENGTH OF MANUSCRIPT: We do not accept novels that are shorter than 40,000 words unless they are for meant for children or juveniles. If you want to submit a short story (a written work less than 40,000 words) we are looking for those for inclusion in one of our quarterly periodicals; to inquire about those please send an email to our Periodicals representative.

  For book publication, we will accept collections of short stories presented as a single submission, if the collection is 40,000 words or longer. For paperback publication, we prefer 150,000 words as an uppoer limit to the word count but we are flexible in this regard. We will not reject an otherwise acceptable but longer work, provided that the story is fast-paced throughout its length.

  We DO NOT accept simultaneous submissions! Please make sure that your submission has been sent EXCLUSIVELY to us for consideration.

RESPONSE TIME: We will process submissions as they are submitted, and depending on our work load, you can expect an emailed reply within 5 to 6 weeks of the date received.

GENRES: We are currently accepting all of the genres and their subgenres listed on the webpage entitled Genres.

  Submissions in a genre or subgenre that is not listed will not be considered this time around, nor will the author receive an emailed reply if his/her submission does not conform to these requirements.

FORMATS: We are currently publishing both in Print and in eBook format.

  The eBook formats are Rocket-eBook, Hiebook, Adobe PDF, MS-Reader, Mobipocket, iSilo, Franklin eBookMan, Palm Doc, Kindle, HTML, and SONY. As new technologies emerge in the area of the electronic book we will include them as well.

SERIES OF NOVELS: If an author has a completed a series of related works or is considering doing so, and we accept the first book in the series, then we will also accept the other novels in the series; unless we discover the quality of those to be markedly inferior to that of the first book. Each book in the series should stand alone (i.e. have a definite conclusion).

What We Want Or Will Consider In A Submission

The entire manuscript of a work must not only be completely finished, but also lovingly, painstakingly edited and polished, and placed in the format we require. (See the section on formatting.) We will not accept submissions that require exhaustive editing, no matter how ingenious the story line may be.
Believable, well-developed characters.
A riveting plot. We want those fascinating characters to be caught up in an intense, dramatic, suspenseful conflict. We want to see an action-packed beginning that immediately draws us into the unfolding drama. We want the suspense to build toward a thunderous climax.
Originality. We want stories that stand apart from those of established, successful authors. We want stories written by people possessed of a vivid imagination, an ability to write memorable prose, a talent for creating lively, natural-sounding dialogue, and a determination to avoid long, dull, descriptive, repetitive passages that impede the flow of the narrative. Authors of hard science fiction should be knowledgeable regarding current science and technology, so that their portrayal of futuristic scientific achievements does not violate the laws of physics.

COVER ART: Polymancer Studios will provide intriguing, highly artistic cover art. The image created for a particular book will appear both in the eBook file of the work, and on the paperback version, if the author elects to offer a paperback version. We do not accept cover art provided by the author, unless previously discussed and contracted for by Polymancer Studios.

Contract Terms

A full contract will be supplied to the author for review upon our acceptance of the work.
Royalties: 40% of the cover price less credit card processing fees for eBooks sold through one of our online storefronts, 40% of the net amount received from a reseller, and 30% of the net for printed books.
Rights: we will acquire only the digital rights (exclusive electronic rights for eBook and audio use) for five years, with an automatic one year renewal unless either party provides a written request after the five year term, but before the anniversary of each one year renewal date. For printed books, we will also acquire the paperback rights for five years.
Royalty payments that total more than $25.00 will be paid semiannually. Payments will be made approximately two months after the end of the period. The length of this delay will depend on the amount of time our retailers take to distribute payments to us.
Our preferred method of payment is by check or to deposit the royalty payment in an author-supplied PayPal Account.
Authors who prefer not to use PayPal can request that they be mailed a check in Canadian funds. Such a check will be drawn on a Canadian bank, and mailed from Canada, so authors residing in the USA should realize that considerable time may elapse before such a check arrives, and then clears through a USA bank. PSI is not responsible for any service charges your bank or financial institution may charge for processing.

How To Arrange, Format, And Send Your Submission

Manuscripts must be submitted electronically, in either .txt, .rtf, .odt, or .doc formats, and be sent as an attachment to an email, to submissions (at) polymancerstudios (dot) com (We do apologize for not giving the link exactly, but in order to reduce the amount of spam we receive, we ask that you replace the proper symbols in this email address).
We will NOT accept manuscripts sent in other formats than those listed above, or those contained within the body of an email.
The email must contain “Submission to PSI of [title of book] by [your real name]” in the subject line.
Include a short, one-paragraph note in the body of the email, where you introduce yourself, if you are submitting to PSI for the first time.
The submission must be a single file. For details, see our Formatting Guidelines.
Manuscripts must be placed in the format we require. See our Formatting Guidelines.

Formatting Guidelines

The single file constituting the submission must be separated into two portions, Part A and Part B, by a Manual Page break. To insert a Manual Page break, click on Insert (usually) in the word processor's main toolbar, and then on select Break. Under “Section Break Types,” you will find “Next Page.” Click on that (these instructions may be slightly different on your word-processor but there should not be too much difference and the instructions should be easy enough to follow).

Part A must contain the following items in the order given below. Insert the numbering and the headings given below and then follow them with the required information. Single space the paragraphs providing this information.

Submission of [name of book] by [your real name].
Contact Information, each item placed on a separate line:
1. Author's real name.
2. Author's pseudonym, if you wish the work to appear under a pen name.
3. Author's mailing address, including your country.
4. Author's telephone number.
5. Author's email address.
Synopsis: A short description of the story: three paragraphs that total approximately 250 words. Note, the short and long synopsis is used to whet the potential reader's appetite and should tempt them but not give away any plot points that would ruin the experience for them.
Short Synopsis: A very concise description of the book: one that totals no more than 175 words.
Long Synopsis: A more detailed description of the book. Five or six paragraphs totaling 400 to 450 words.
Biography: A biography of you, the author, using your pen name, if you have one. The biography should be two or three paragraphs totaling approximately 250 words. Since the public will see this biography, write it with that fact in mind, in the third person.
Photograph: A digital photograph, if you have one available, and wish it displayed to the public.
Series: State whether or not your submission forms part of a series. If it does, state whether or not the other books in the series are also finished and polished. State the name of the series and the number of books the series contains.
Genre: State what genre and subgenre best describe your story.
Publishing History: State whether the submission has been previously published. If it has, then it is essential that all rights have reverted back exclusively to you.
Editing: State whether the manuscript has been edited by a professional editor. Whether it has or not, your book, if accepted, will still be edited by us, with a view to correcting any errors in grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, and spelling that have escaped detection by you or your editor.
A Final, Important Note: Acceptance of your submission will depend, to a marked degree, on your having few errors in grammar, sentence structure, punctuation and spelling, both in the manuscript and in the synopses or biography that you include in Part A. Manuscripts needing exhaustive editing will be rejected, after we read them only so far as to enable us to make that determination.

  The synopses and biography will be used to help sell your book, so make those as well-crafted as the narrative they describe!

  Part B. Copy and paste your complete, proofread, carefully edited, properly formatted manuscript into this part of the single document.

Formatting The Manuscript: We require that your manuscript be formatted as follows.

  To insert certain required formatting values into your manuscript, click on Format in the word-processor's main toolbar, and then click on Font. When you finish with Font, click on Paragraph.

  Enter in each the values indicated in A and B, below:

  A. Format, Font: Times New Roman, regular, 12 point.

  B. Format, Paragraph, Indents and Spacing, General: Alignment = left, Outline Level = body text. Indentation: Left = 0, Right = 0. Special = First line, By = .5. Spacing: Before = 0 pt. After = 0 pt. Line Spacing = single.

Do not put blank lines between the paragraphs of text.
Do not use headers or footers, and do not number the pages.
Use one-inch margins.
Leave two spaces between sentences.
Thoughts expressed by a character, as opposed to spoken words, must be italicized rather than placed within quotation marks. Foreign words or phrases, and words that the author wishes to emphasize, must also be italicized. Do not use underlining for this purpose.
Do not press the Tab key at the beginning of each paragraph! Doing so will double the degree of indentation. If you habitually do that, and are now putting a completed manuscript into the format we require, please remove all the Tab arrows at the beginning of each paragraph. To render those Tab arrows visible, click on the Show/Hide icon in the word-processor's toolbar. (You can use Find and Replace to remove the Tab marks. Click on Find, More, Special, Tab Character. Click on replace. Leave Replace blank. Click on Replace All. The Tab arrows will all vanish.)
We strongly recommend that you get into the habit of activating the Show/Hide icon on the word-processor's toolbar as you write, so as to see not only the arrows made by the Tab key, but also the dots representing spaces and the symbols representing paragraph marks.
Try not to leave two spaces at the end of the last sentence of a paragraph. Those wrap around. In some formats used by publishers, those wrapped-around spaces can cause trouble. We urge you to perform the tedious task of removing those, if they abound in your manuscript, before sending it to us.

First Page of the Manuscript:

In the upper right hand corner, place the following, each on its own line:
- Your real name.
- Pen name you wish used.
- Word count.
- Your mailing address.
- Your telephone number.
- Your email address.
Place the cursor on the line that says “Delete the instructions given below”. Read and then delete the instructions. Insert the properly formatted, single-spaced manuscript.
Separate chapters with a Page Break. To insert a Page Break, click on Insert , in the main word-processor toolbar, and then on Break, and then on “Page Break.” Do not leave blank space above the chapter heading.

We require this kind of formatting because it makes submissions easy for us to read, and easy to set up for publishing. Because we save time by setting this requirement, you can be assured that a book we accept will be offered for sale that much sooner!

If you have any questions regarding any aspect of the formatting described above, please email us at submissions (at) polymancerstudios (dot) com and we will reply promptly.