Welcome to our Submissions Guidelines for Fiction & Non-Fiction

Edition 2010.1 

A diamond mine, not a slush pile

Pantera Press is one of the few book publishers that not only accepts unsolicited manuscripts, we welcome them.

In the publishing industry worldwide, unsolicited manuscripts carry a pejorative, the ‘slush pile’. But not at Pantera Press. To us, they’re a diamond mine so we treat every submission as if it might be our next diamond strike.

Over the last couple of years, out of hundreds of submissions, we have discovered a few gems, and we are publishing them. Some are in our first year’s list (starting with releases in May, June, July and September, 2010), and others we’re committed to for 2011.

If your work is what we’re seeking, we’d be delighted to see it, so please read on to find out if it is what we’re interested in or not, so you don’t waste your time or ours.

Pantera Press does not charge for reviewing submissions, nor do we ask our authors to pay for publication.

What we want, and why

Pantera Press aims to be known as a great new home for Australia’s next generation of best-loved authors™.

That means we want to discover, launch and nurture previously unpublished Australian writers… writers who, despite having more than one great book in them, and having a passion for writing, have not been able to get published.

It means we want books with wide appeal, whether fiction or non-fiction. Books that readers will rave about. Great stories that are riveting and well-written. In fiction, we call them Stories for Storylovers™. In non-fiction, we call them Books that Question Answers™.

These are all books with bestseller-potential and with strong, quality writing and style.

For fiction, that means an absorbing, page-turning plot with characters that readers will care about, held together by good writing and style.

For non-fiction, it means something new and important about things that matter, also with good writing and style, and an ability to connect with a popular readership.

We definitely want to hear from you if you think you might be the next John Grisham, Tim Winton, Jodi Picoult, Katherine Grenville, Geraldine Brooks, Stephen King or Jane Green, or if you’ve written the next 'Spotless', 'Freakonomics' or 'Tipping Point'.

Notes:

• What do we mean by 'previously unpublished'? If you're in doubt, please ask us, but to us it means:

  • you've never published

  • you've only self-published

  • you've only published short stories or book chapters, but not full-length books

  • you've published in fiction, but you're now writing non-fiction

  • you've published in non-fiction, but you're now writing fiction

  • you've published a zillion years ago, your publisher dropped you, & you're trying to re-start.

• We are NOT currently publishing picture or illustrated books, children's books, photography, cookbooks, memoirs, self-help books, poetry, play scripts, short stories, compilations or chapter books. So please do NOT submit them to us.

• Please do NOT submit work to us that you're submitting to another publisher.

good books doing good things™

Our unique good books doing good things™ approach is key to seeing why we’re different. It wraps up three elements: good books, good things, & what we mean by doing. There's more detail about this here, but below is a quick summary that's especially relevant to authors thinking of submitting to us.

... good books - books we & our authors can profit from

These are books that satisfy our key criteria above, and which we aim to publish with high production values and strong marketing. Please check out some of our books in bookstores to see for yourself.

We are committed to strong editing, so we assign all our authors a professional editor to help them and us make their book as good as it can be. Compelling book covers and internal design are also important in grabbing a bookbuyer’s eyes as they scan across the shelves or on-line catalogues. So we use expert book designers. We choose editors and designers with long experience of working with some of the biggest publishing houses.

To give our books the best chance of penetration into Australian and NZ bookstores, we have a strong strategic partnership with our distributor, Simon & Schuster (Australia).  

... good things - publishing great new authors, & more

Foremost is our ambition to discover, launch, nurture and keep publishing great new writers. 

By launching a new writer, we are investing in them as a longer-term proposition, one we hope to be mutually-rewarding and enjoyable. So we're looking for writers with more than one book in them, even if you haven't yet written your next ones. Relationships are important to us, so we want writers who are good to deal with. We want to discover new writers and keep on publishing them, to help build their reputations, and ours. As we said earlier, we aim to be a great new home for Australia's next generation of best-loved authors™. We see that as a worthy objective.

As well, we have built our business with a ‘profits for philanthropy’ foundation. This means we will use some of our profits to fund programs focused on literacy, the joys of reading, quality writing and fostering debate.  Find out more about the programs we are supporting currently.

... doing - our innovative financial model for authors

We've also adopted a different financial model for our authors*, modelling our preferred contract on an arrangement some big-name authors have negotiated with their publishers. To us, it creates a better alignment between the interests of author and publisher and encourages a mutually-rewarding, long-term relationship.

In essence, instead of the traditional advance/royalty model, we offer our book authors:

• a small, but non-refundable ‘advance’  - as a good faith sign-on fee, plus

• 50% of the profits their books generate.

Our authors pay no money towards publication. We offer a split of profits, not of costs.

Simply put, if your books are great successes, you can do better financially under this model than under a traditional royalty arrangement. But we can’t guarantee success – no publisher can – though we will be striving for it. If your books aren’t successful, you will likely make less under our model, but you will still have had your books published, and by a passionate publisher who believes in them.

We choose authors whose stories, we believe, have a good chance at success and are people we expect to enjoy working with. It’s in Pantera Press's interests for our authors to do well financially because we want them to write more books for us even more quickly, and for a long time.

Next ›

 

[*This model does not apply to WHY vs WHY™ - please see our separate terms for the WHY vs WHY series.]