Submission Guidelines for Blue Cedar Press
Blue Cedar Press is a small, independent press that publishes four to eight books a year in paperback and ebook formats. We publish fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Our goal is to publish fine writing by new voices from the Prairie and the Planet. If you wish to have us consider your work for publication, here are our guidelines:
Send to Managing Editor Laura Tillem, bluecedarpress@gmail.com
1. A cover letter that briefly describes the work and the author’s background, lists any publication credits if applicable, and explains why the work is a fit for Blue Cedar Press. Include the word count in your cover letter. Authors do not pay Blue Cedar Press to publish their books. We select works we believe in and take the loss if sales don’t repay the publication cost.
2. A brief synopsis of the work (“this happens, then this happens…”), preferably less than two pages in length.
3. The work itself. Writers may submit either the full manuscript or a sample of between 20 and 30 pages. Please keep in mind that full manuscripts take longer to review. All manuscripts should include page numbers.
4. Your manuscript should be size 12 font Times New Roman or Garamond and double spaced with your working title in the header. Use emdash rather than hyphens to set off phrases. One space after a period, please. Use the enter key to begin a new paragraph but NOT at the end of each line. We follow Chicago Style for spelling, capitalization, punctuation and use the Oxford comma for items in a series.
5. Include the word count in your cover letter. Remember that we rarely publish books more than 300 pages because of the cost of publication. Remember also that Blue Cedar Press does NOT take money from authors to publish their work. We select works we believe in and take the loss if its sales don’t repay the publication cost.
6. Please include all parts of your submission in a single Word document.
We do accept simultaneous submissions. as long as you notify us if your work is accepted elsewhere.
If part of your manuscript has been previously published, please note the citation and what is included in the previously published cite.
We do not accept AI-generated submissions.
We will acknowledge receipt of your materials within two weeks. Two members of our board (one team for prose and another for poetry) read the submissions and recommend to the board either moving toward publication, requiring changes, or rejecting the manuscript. Authors we publish receive 22 copies of their book and, once the cost of publication is recovered, 60% of all royalties.