Linen Press is looking for beautifully written manuscripts which are relevant to women’s lives and which surprise us with their style and content.

We welcome submissions from established and emergent writers, writers from minority groups, and those who write in English as a second language. We publish literary fiction, top end contemporary fiction, memoir, biography, short stories and poetry. Non-fiction that is relevant to women’s lives and experiences will also be considered. We are building a list of international authors.

Linen Press fills the niche left by the big publishers who fill the chain stores with celebrity memoirs and blockbusters. We publish three or four books a year to the highest possible standard. We are a hands-on publisher, working closely with our authors, and we practise what we preach.

We do not publish children’s books, illustrated stories, romantic fiction, chick lit, fantasy, science fiction or horror, and will only consider collections of short stories and poetry by Linen Press and other previously published authors. Please don’t send any submissions in these genres because they will not be read.

We are happy to receive unsolicited submissions as long as they fit the ethos of the Linen Press.

What happens next

We get 7-10 submissions a week, double that amount since lockdown. It’s a monumental task to read them but we read some or all of everything that comes in. However, given this volume, I’m afraid we can’t send individual comments and critiques. If we did that, we would do nothing else. If we like what we read, we’ll be back in touch fairly quickly to ask for the first fifty pages. After reading those, we’ll send you comments and discuss the next moves. If you haven’t heard from us within a month, unfortunately this means that your submission has been unsuccessful and we won’t be asking for more chapters. We understand how tough this is and wish you luck placing your writing elsewhere.

Submission guidelines

• Submissions via the form below. We ask you to include a short writing CV, a synopsis and the first 2500 words of your completed manuscript or the first two short stories.
• Put the title of your work in all files. Name your file using the title of your work and your name, or an abbreviation of these.
• A brief synopsis is really important for us. We don’t want to know the plot but we do want to know what kind of book you are sending in. Tell us: What genre? Which themes and issues are addressed? What makes your writing unique? Why is your book relevant to women?

Those who submit to us must purchase one of last year’s paperback books, The Silent Women, the water all around us, or My Blue Peninsula, the third row of three here:
https://www.linen-press.com/shop/
partly to contribute a small amount to the time-consuming work of reading many submissions, partly so that you are familiar with recent additions to our list. Submissions without a purchase won’t be read. We do however acknowledge that for some of you, this cost may be a barrier for entry. If you can’t afford to buy a book, please email us at submissions@linen-press.com.

Please visit the Linen Press bookshop to make your purchase, and we’ll cross reference your order with your submission.