Submissions

Preparing a manuscript for submission can be a daunting task, but by following some guidelines, you can give your work a better chance of being accepted. Take some time to find out more about the publishers you are approaching: their mission as a publisher, the genres they publish, and their manuscript submission guidelines.

We accept all manner of literary work—poetry, short stories and novels, including non-fiction work such as graphic memoirs, biographies and essays. As a publisher based in Singapore, we mostly develop and support works and writers from Singapore and the Southeast Asia region, but we are open to consider submissions from other localities if they strongly align with our catalogue. We are not focused on young people's books (children's and adolescents' titles). We also prefer to read a full manuscript so that we can more adequately assess the work.

BEFORE SUBMITTING

Besides your manuscript, please provide the following:

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A brief resume or cover letter highlighting your writing interests, any past or ongoing writing projects, and your contact details.

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A cover letter pitching your work to us, highlighting what your work is about and how you think it aligns with our catalogue.

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A synopsis of your manuscript (about 100 words), and a plot summary especially if a long-form work.

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If applicable, a content warning or declaration of potentially disturbing content (e.g. sexual assault, racism or racial slurs, extreme violence, suicide or self harm etc.), out of consideration for readers and our staff assessing the manuscript. For more information about content warnings and the intentions behind them, please refer to this resource: https://www.tckpublishing.com/content-warnings/

If you’re submitting a proposal for a book, instead of a manuscript, your pitch should include:

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An outline of the contents of the book and chapter summaries. For anthology pitches, please include contributor names as well.

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A few pages of sample writing to give us a sense of the tone and style of the work.

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Your resume and cover letter as outlined above.

You may combine these into a single document. Make sure that your cover letter and manuscript are well-organised and proofread. Sloppy submissions will adversely affect your manuscript's chances of being considered.

SUBMITTING YOUR MANUSCRIPT

You may choose to submit your manuscript and the complementary documents by email or by post, but we prefer the former. If form is integral to your text, you may send along an additional PDF copy of the manuscript for our reference. For hardcopy submissions, please address the package to "The Editor". Remember to keep at least one copy of your manuscript for yourself as publishers are not obliged to return your submission, and cannot be held responsible for lost manuscripts.

For email submissions, please input "[title of manuscript], [Name]" in the subject header.

AFTER SUBMITTING YOUR MANUSCRIPT

You will receive an autoresponse acknowledging receipt of your submission. As we receive a high volume of submissions, we are not able to evaluate every single one. Please allow us 5-10 working days to read your cover letter and other pitch materials and we will inform you of whether we will proceed with the evaluation of your manuscript. We appreciate you entrusting us with your work and we kindly seek your understanding on this.


For submissions that we decide to evaluate, we take an average of four months to read, discuss and respond. The waiting period may vary with the time of the year (festival seasons and the later half are generally more hectic) and our publishing schedule.

It is acceptable to submit your manuscript to more than one publisher at a time. You may choose to disclose this information in your cover letter, as it sometimes spurs publishers to respond earlier to your submission.


When you are ready, send in your manuscripts to us at: manuscripts(at)ethosbooks(dot)com(dot)sg.
All the best!

P.S. If you are interested in independently publishing your work, that is, engaging our professional publishing services, you can enquire with Pagesetters Services Pte Ltd.


(updated as of October 2023)