Indirect Books General Submissions

Indirect Books will source the majority of our published work from the slush pile, building relationships with talented authors and championing their work at all stages. We are open to submissions of novels, story collections, essay collections, memoirs, and hybrid projects. ​We only consider literary fiction.

See our website for more detailed guidelines. We are seeking risk-adept, language-driven writing that pushes the boundaries of form and rests comfortably beyond convention.

Substantive Guidelines

Please send us sample pages from a section of your manuscript, beginning with the opening, up to 5,000 words. To accompany your submission, please include a brief author bio, including publication history, alongside a query letter with the following information:

• Word count
• 1-2 sentence pitch
• 2-3 paragraph synopsis
• Comp titles

We respond to all submissions, and we work to do so within six weeks. If you need to edit your submission (query letter or sample pages), please use the 'request edit' feature on Submittable. Minor errors and typos will not affect the result of your query.

If we feel your submission may be a fit with our acquisition interests and production capacities, we will request a full manuscript. At that stage, we will do our best to read and reply to material within 1-2 months. We estimate a publication timeline of 1-2 books per year.

Formatting Guidelines 

• All submissions should be in Times New Roman, 12pt font, double spaced, one-inch margins.
• Please include page numbers.
• We can only consider work written in English, but welcome British, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand English in addition to American English.
• Please proofread and only send us polished, completed work.

We look forward to reading your work. Thank you for your support of fearless writing.