Submissions

Welcome! We are excited to share our new online submission system with you. As with all things new there may be unforeseen hiccups, so please bear with us if you encounter any ghosts in the machine.

Turnstone Press is a literary publisher, located in the heart of the North American continent. We publish Canadian authors and landed immigrants and strive to publish a significant number of new writers, to publish in a variety of genres, and to have a portion of each year's list authored by Manitoba writers and/or books featuring prairie content. We are always looking for titles that reflect the diversity of both Manitoba and Canada and encourage Indigenous writers, writers of colour, writers from the LGBTQ2S community and writers with disabilities to send us their work.

We are interested in literary fiction, literary non-fiction—including literary criticism—and poetry. We also publish literary mysteries, thrillers, noir, speculative fiction, and urban fantasy under our Ravenstone imprint.

We do NOT publish young adult, young reader, children’s, romance, horror, cookbooks, self-help, business, family histories or personal memoirs (a.k.a. “life writing”).

Our books cover a range of subjects and styles, so if you are interested in submitting to us, we recommend you familiarize yourself with recent titles on our list to see if your manuscript might be a fit for our publishing program.

Currently Seeking

While we remain open to receiving our usual interests of literary fiction, literary non-fiction, and poetry, we'd be pleased to consider the following materials:

• CliFi (Ravenstone)
• Environmentally Aware Literary Fiction (Turnstone)
• Winter-themed Literary Fiction (Turnstone)

Submission Tips

•  Understand what we publish and ensure your submission is a fit for Turnstone. Understand what we do not publish (see above). Knowing this saves you time and effort.

•  Read and follow the manuscript submission requirements.

• Deliberation is more important than speed.

• Be dedicated to the art and craft of writing.

Manuscript Submission Requirements

Please read to the end of this section before submitting your work to Turnstone Press.

We understand how daunting it can be to find a publisher when submitting a manuscript. Therefore, we have an open submissions policy. We prefer exclusivity, but if it is a multiple submission, please indicate this when submitting your work. Please note that if your manuscript is being seriously considered for publication, we will require a period of exclusivity before continuing to assess it.

Remember that submitting a manuscript to a book publisher is a professional correspondence. We create guidelines to make our expectations clear and to help us handle your submission.

Whether poetry, fiction, or non-fiction, please send the entire manuscript you want us to consider.

For fiction and non-fiction:

• Manuscripts must be typed in a minimum 12 point serif typeface such as Times, Book Antiqua, or Garamond.
• Please double-space the text and indicate paragraph breaks with an indent.

For poetry:

• The manuscript layout should reflect the way you imagine the poetry to appear on the page.

We apologize that we are unable to: 1) provide detailed feedback on all the manuscripts we receive; or 2) respond to questions about these submission guidelines.

Turnstone Press only accepts submissions via its online submission form. To access our online submission form you must create an account on the Turnstone Press website.

For all submissions:

1. Register and Login to our website here.
2. Click "Submit Your Work" from the “Your Account” menu.
3. Complete the online form. There are several questions we ask you to complete including:
   • What experience do you have as a writer?
   • Provide a brief synopsis of your submission. Not a cryptic cliff hanger synopsis. A plain boring plot summary.
   • Why do you feel Turnstone is the best place for your manuscript?
   • What do you think readers will find most interesting about your work?
4. Select the manuscript you would like to submit/upload to Turnstone. If you wish to provide a cover letter please include it in the body of the manuscript submission. If you have substantial relevant publishing credits, please include your CV as a separate file along with your manuscript.

Please be specific about the publishing credits—title of the work published, the journal/magazine/book they appeared and what date. Send us only one submission per form. For additional or subsequent submissions submit a new form.

Timelines

We take your submission seriously (your writing may be exactly what we are looking for), but please understand that given the volume of submissions we receive and the demands of turning accepted manuscripts into books, delays do happen.

We plan our publication schedule approximately 18 to 24 months in advance, so the time from submission to publication is often over two years. This is necessary to meet the pre-publicity and pre-sales deadlines for major publications and retailers.