Submissions
It’s reasonably likely that anyone sending stuff to us is fairly new to the process, or at least hasn’t yet been successful in getting a conventional publisher to take them on. That’s not necessarily the end of the world; these days conventional publishing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. However, there are certain things that even we expect from our potential authors.
Please get in touch first to see if we’re in a position to accept a submission – just as other publishers do, we sometimes get a glut of submissions and we just can’t cope. At present, things are pretty busy. At other times it’s quieter.
What we’re looking for are books which we feel will bring credit to the Comely Bank Publishing ‘brand’ – good, entertaining writing which we’d be proud to be associated with. We want the logo to be a mark of quality, making a fortune isn’t the key aim here.
Finally, please remember we are a not-for-profit organisation. In theory no-one is paid anything to help you; you repay us by trying to help us with our own work. In practice, though, new authors rarely have the skills to edit, typeset, provide covers, market books or even proofread. In those circumstances it's unreasonable to expect us to offer what we do for nothing, although arrangements are private (i.e. not through Comely Bank Publishing), you can choose whoever you like, and we individual authors are a lot cheaper than commercial providers. A typical self-publishing package costs over £3,000 – we can show you how to do it for a whole lot less than that.
You’ll not get everything right at first – none of us did – but we hope this all helps a little. And of course, if you want to know anything else, just get in touch.
Please bear in mind that Comely Bank Publishing is a local, Edinburgh-based self-publishing collective and that you'll need to be able to meet me, and probably other authors as well. Effectively that means that you have to live in or around Edinburgh yourself. That also applies to anything we publish under our other imprints, including Dean Park Press
Good luck – Gordon Lawrie, Founder & Managing Director, Comely Bank Publishing Group
- Dean Park Press concentrates on adult fiction. At present we're not accepting YA manuscripts, although we have done so in the past and might do so again in the future. We’re simply not equipped to deal with out-and-out children’s fiction at all – The Gruffalo and so on – although we’re happy to advise. Nor do we do non-fiction at present. Dean Park Press will consider other material.
- Please make sure your manuscript is readable. That means it should have been properly checked over for spelling mistakes, grammar, punctuation and style consistency before you think of sending it to us (or any other potential agent or publisher, for that matter).
- Send it to us as a Word document, preferably .doc rather than .docx, but we can take both. No, we don’t like Word either, but I’m afraid it’s the industry standard so we have to put up with it. If you don’t have Word already, the Home and Student version is all you need. Please use a serif font like Times New Roman, rather than sans-serif font like Verdana. Books need those little bits at the bottom of the letters.
- You'll almost certainly send it to us as an A4 document. That’s fine, but we’ll be converting it to a different size to see how many paperback pages your book would require. Another thing we’ll be doing is to try it out roughly as an ebook. This is all but impossible if your text is badly formatted – the big no-nos are the use of the tab/indent key, and the use of extra spaces, to bring text into the places you want. Please don’t do that at all. There’s guidance on how to format text elsewhere here.
- We need to know a little about you. Who are you, what’s your CV? Have you written anything else, ever, even for work? And at some point we’ll need a photo of you. Everyone says “I don’t take a good photo” but in fact everyone does, it often just needs a good photographer to take it.
Please get in touch first to see if we’re in a position to accept a submission – just as other publishers do, we sometimes get a glut of submissions and we just can’t cope. At present, things are pretty busy. At other times it’s quieter.
What we’re looking for are books which we feel will bring credit to the Comely Bank Publishing ‘brand’ – good, entertaining writing which we’d be proud to be associated with. We want the logo to be a mark of quality, making a fortune isn’t the key aim here.
Finally, please remember we are a not-for-profit organisation. In theory no-one is paid anything to help you; you repay us by trying to help us with our own work. In practice, though, new authors rarely have the skills to edit, typeset, provide covers, market books or even proofread. In those circumstances it's unreasonable to expect us to offer what we do for nothing, although arrangements are private (i.e. not through Comely Bank Publishing), you can choose whoever you like, and we individual authors are a lot cheaper than commercial providers. A typical self-publishing package costs over £3,000 – we can show you how to do it for a whole lot less than that.
You’ll not get everything right at first – none of us did – but we hope this all helps a little. And of course, if you want to know anything else, just get in touch.
Please bear in mind that Comely Bank Publishing is a local, Edinburgh-based self-publishing collective and that you'll need to be able to meet me, and probably other authors as well. Effectively that means that you have to live in or around Edinburgh yourself. That also applies to anything we publish under our other imprints, including Dean Park Press
Good luck – Gordon Lawrie, Founder & Managing Director, Comely Bank Publishing Group
