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FoxAcre Press is seeking books to publish. We are looking for previously published science fiction or fantasy that is currently out of print in the North American or World market. We also publish single-author collections of stories which have been published in serial form, even if they have not appeared in book form. We do not publish previously unpublished fiction -- reprints only . We're looking for the good stuff -- the books that deserve to be back in print.
We also publish books on publishing and writing, but thus far we have not accepted any unsolicited submissions in this category. We are only interested in books on these subjects if they are written by experienced professionals. If you've never published a novel, we're not going to publish your book on how to write novels.
We do not publish books outside the above categories. If you submit books for publication that do not fit the description above, you are wasting your time and ours -- and demonstrating that you are incapable of certain skills expected of professional writers -- such as locating, reading, believing, and following a publisher's stated guidelines for writers. (Forgive the peremptory tone of this paragraph, but we've been getting some submissions from wannabe writers who obviously just don't pay attention to gentle hints.)
We are not a print shop or a publishing service provider or a fulfillment house. If you are looking for someone to print and ship your self-published novel, that simply is not the business we're in.
Queries only, please. If you have a novel or short story collection that is out of print, and wish to submit it, please send a query letter to FoxAcre Press at query@foxacre.com. We will be moving offices in the near future, and we therefore do not want queries sent via conventional mail, for fear that they might be sent to the wrong address and lost. We will post our new addresses here when appropriate. As we are doing reprints only, please be sure that your query letter includes a clear statement to the effect that North American book rights have reverted to you, and that the book's rights are currently available. We cannot be responsible for unsolicited submissions. We try to respond promptly to all submissions, and we are much faster than the big houses -- but please allow for at least a month or two at each stage of the process.
Do NOT email us the complete text of your book! It clutters up our email servers and ties up our email system to no purpose. In similar vein to the comments above, if we receive your unsolicited manuscript via email, that pretty much guarantees that we won't publish your work, as you will have demonstrated that you are incapable of doing basic market research, or of reading or following basic instructions, such as these writer's guidelines. The odds of someone who does that writing a book we'll want are pretty slim. Furthermore, we do not open email attachments from persons unknown to us, for fear of contracting a computer virus. Assume that any such submissions will be erased unread.
Submission format. Once we have agreed to publish your book, it will be time to enter the text into our computer system to prepare the layout. If at all possible, please get us your book on disk. Ideally, we would like to receive perfectly proofread manuscript pages, accompanied by matching computer disk files. We're a PC-format operation, but we can read PC or Mac disks in most of the common file formats, and many of the oddball ones. But please do check with us and make sure we can handle your disk format before you send anything. If need be, we can scan in text from a manuscript or book. We must remove the pages from the book to do this, so the book itself will be destroyed in the process. Don't send a collector's item! Furthermore, our scanner can occasionally chew up a sheet or two of paper, so do NOT send us your original, fragile, and irreplaceable typewritten manuscript! We work from photocopies only. Scanned-in text does require close and careful proofreading, and thus means more work for everyone. Therefore, we prefer books on disk. Bear in mind that we have yet to see a perfectly "clean" manuscript, regardless of submission format. You're going to have to proofread page proofs -- and there will be typos.
Printing technology. FoxAcre uses "book-on-demand" printing, which means that books are printed only when they are ordered. (That's the ideal, anyway. As a practical matter, we normally keep a few copies of each title on hand.) We print some titles in our own shop, and also have them printed by Lightning Source, a subsidiary of Ingram. Thanks to the Lightning Source connection, our titles are plugged into Ingram's distribution system -- and thus into every bookseller that uses Ingram for ordering, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. Readers can of course order from our website. However, unlike some on-demand "publishers" readers can also buy from lots of other places -- for example, real bookstores. At present, we use only "book-on-demand" printing, but we will shift to conventional offset printing for books where longer print runs make that more cost-effective.
Contract details. There are many services out there that charge the writer for the privilege of having his or her book stored in a computer system, just in case someone orders it. That's not us. We are not a fee-charging print shop disguised as a publisher. FoxAcre operates under one simple rule: The money moves toward the writer. We do not charge our authors any publishing fees. If we don't believe in the book enough to put our own money behind it, we're not going to publish it. Our standard contract is based on the Science Fiction Writers of America's model hardcover and softcover contracts. Generally speaking, we pay a small advance against royalties, and a royalty of ten percent on copies sold, payable twice a year. We only sell books on a non-returnable basis. We do not have to compute -- or charge -- "a reasonable reserve against returns." Once a copy of your book sells, it stays sold, and you'll get paid for it without endless delay or creative accounting. Our standard contract allows either party to the contract to walk away with ninety days' notice after an initial two-year period. This is important because, without such a reversion clause, a book-on-demand publisher could hang onto the rights to a book forever. Most conventional contracts grant the publisher the right to retain the rights so long as the book is "in print." With book-on-demand, a publisher with such a reversion clause could keep your book in print until the end of time, merely by keeping one copy of the book on hand, or even by simply storing the text in his computer system.
Our titles are available for sale via our website, at www.foxacre.com, and, of course, through Amazon.com, BarneandNoble.com, BooksAMillion.com, and other online booksellers. Bookstores can order the titles through Ingram/Lightning Source, via the standard Ingram ordering procedures. See the bookseller info page for more information. Books will tend to be available direct from FoxAcre a month or two before they are available through other channels.
We also sell "author's stock" titles. If your publisher has sold you a case or two of a book that's out-of-print, we can help you sell them.
FoxAcre Press is run by Roger MacBride Allen, a working writer who has eighteen published novels to his credit. He knows the publishing business from the writer's side of things. It was the desire to get his own favorite works back in print that led him to start FoxAcre. If you have a book that ought to be re-issued, contact FoxAcre, and we'll make it happen.
For more information, send a query to query@foxacre.com.