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Submission Guidelines

General submissions now CLOSED

2021 AWARDS are OPEN through July 31

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Thank you for choosing Winter Goose Publishing, we are honored you’ve picked us. Please read the information and guidelines carefully before making your submission.  The best way to get a feel as to what we are looking for is to read some of our titles. Our authors are family and it’s important that you make sure we are the right choice for you. Don’t hesitate to tell us what books and authors you like at WGP, it lets us know you’ve taken the time to get to know us. Providing all the information we’ve requested below allows us to get to know you too, so please make sure you send in a all the required information.

General information:

• We are primarily looking for authors with already traditionally published books and an established author platform.
• We only publish a limited number of Poetry books per year.
• We accept unsolicited manuscripts through this venue only. We have a small editorial staff, and we respond to submissions as quickly as we can. We cannot take phone calls or respond to emails inquiring about the status of a submission.
• All material must be new and previously unpublished.
• If we have denied your work, please wait six months before resubmitting.
• Winter Goose Publishing (WGP) is a royalty-paying trade publisher. There are no fees associated with editing or publishing of any kind  or at any point in the process. All material published is under contract and any rights sold to WGP will revert to the author at the end of the contract period. All material submitted and published remains the property of the author.
• WGP publishes books in print and eBook. We are committed to accepting and putting out only quality work.

We accept:

-Fiction

• Action/Adventure
• Suspense
• Fantasy
• Mystery
• Romance (Primarily Contemporary, Romantic Suspense and Paranormal, but will consider others)
• Young Adult
• General

-Creative non-fiction
-Poetry and Prose Poetry (focusing on contemporary poets, but rarely publishing anthologies or single pieces by non WGP authors)

We do not accept:

-Unfinished manuscripts (except by referral only)
-Textbooks
-Technical writing
-Biographies (with the exception of sometimes creative or inspirational)
-Anything expressing extremist racial, religious, or political views for the sake of promoting, justifying, or glorifying those ideologies
-Anything with unorthodox sexual behavior (such as bestiality or necrophilia in explicit descriptions)
-Anything violent, abusive, or sexually abusive to children
-Libelous, dangerous, or illegal

Manuscripts:

Please submit your completed manuscript. Include a FULL synopsis of the entire work including all relevant plot points and the ending. Have a cover letter as the first page which contains your contact information and relevant biographical information, including previous publication history and the genre of your manuscript.

Poetry:

Please submit 15 pieces of poetry from your completed manuscript of at least 50 poems. We are looking for manuscripts with an average minimum of 50 to 80 poems. If we are interested we will contact you for the full manuscript. Make sure the cover page contains your contact information and relevant biographical information including previous publication history.  Also include a brief description of the completed manuscript.

Electronic Submissions:

We accept electronic submissions only through our online submission manager. We do not accept manuscripts through the mail or by email. Please read these instructions prior to submitting.

• When submitting, please upload your work as a document (pdf, doc, docx, rtf) and don’t forget your cover letter as the first page of your file. Make sure your cover page contains your contact information and relevant biographical information, including previous publication history. Also include a brief description of the completed manuscript.

Response Communication:

We will respond to all submissions via email. You will receive a notification email confirming receipt of your submission, and when a decision is made, you will be notified again by email. Please note that we receive a large number of submissions during each submission period, so our response times could take several months, but you will be notified regardless of what our decision is.

Submission Checklist:

• Biography (including all website and social media URL’s)
• Contact information
• Full manuscript or 15 Poems
• Full Synopsis + stated genre of your manuscript
• What WGP books and authors do you enjoy?

Please remember that incomplete submissions received will be automatically denied. Read the guidelines in their entirety.