Books - Novels
CLOSED TO NOVEL SUBMISSIONS FOR NOW
The large publishing houses are the junk food of reading, pushing Big Macs and Quarter Pounders to semiliterate quasi-readers and pseudo-intellectuals. Empty words lead to flabby thinking.
Novels ought to be higher entertainment, the kind that requires thinking. If you believe prose ought to flow effortlessly so that a fifth-grader can read it without engaging the brain, don't bother sending your stuff. The notion of José Sagamago that writing ought to be put to paper in such a fashion that the reader must pay attention is an idea we endorse.
Mark in the subject-line NOVEL SUBMISSION.
No synopsis. Instead send us a brief statement of the theory of the novel and sample chapters that represent the major results. Make them representative. Prose counts. We are not interested in flashy introductions leading to shit stories, shit prose, or shit characters. We publish for readers who are willing to give a book room to grow. The idea that a novel must capture a reader within a few pages is great for those with attention deficit disorder, which may include the entire fucking country, but doesn't work here. Hooks are another sign of schlock writing. If you need a hook to drag the reader along, your story is shit anyway. No one here will read it. No one anywhere ought to read it.
For more detail about what we expect from prose, see the discussion of technique.
We are interested in translations of novels, particularly from Brazil.
If you think you are the next Dan Brown, Steven King, John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Elmore Leonard, Patricia Highsmith, Umberto Eco, Salman Rushdie or Paulo Coelho, we are not for you. We wouldn't publish any of their stuff. We would be more likely to publish something by Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis, William Carlos Williams, John Barth, Lawrence Durrell, J. G. Ballard, Raymond Chandler, John Barth, William H. Gass, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Günter Grass, Slavenka Drakulic, or José Saramago, among others, but note the word likely. As in probable, not certain.
Submit to books[@]thedrillpress.com with only the word "book submission" or "novel submission" in the subject line.