Submissions

• Our novel, novella, and short story collection submissions are currently closed. Our short story submissions are open to standalone stories up to 5,000 words.
• Please mark the submission clearly in the subject line to state whether it is a literary submission of a short story, novel or novella. If you are sending a novel or novella, please send the first 10,000 words only.
• For longer fiction, please include a short letter or email telling us about yourself and your writing (often called a ‘query letter’). Please also include a one-page synopsis of the novella or novel’s storyline.
• Please submit only one novel or novella or up to three short stories at any one time.

That’s not an easy question to answer, because it’s a very subjective subject, but for us, generally, it’s about the quality of the writing and the originality of the story, novel or novella. The work might have a distinctive writing style in which the prose is, in some ways, pushing boundaries or it might have an experimental structure or narrative voice. It might have a traditional narrative style, but take the reader somewhere completely new.

We are interested to receive work that sits between literary fiction and genre / book-club fiction, in which case we are looking for: compelling, three-dimensional characters; a plot that absorbs and surprises the reader; some originality to the treatment of the genre; and, in the case of historical fiction, a demonstration of an in-depth understanding of the period.

We are also interested to receive genre-defying fiction which might contain elements of multiple genres, but blending them in an original way. Even if it is done really well, if your work is a classic example of a single genre (such as crime, thriller, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, romance, erotica etc), and particularly if it is one in a series, then it is probably not for us.

In the query letter, please just tell us a little about yourself and your writing. Whether you are new to writing or previously published; whether you have self-published your novel or any previous novels; any awards or competitions you might have won for your writing. Don’t worry if you don’t have any awards and haven’t won any competitions: the point of the letter is to let us know where you are with your writing career. There aren’t any right or wrong answers. Don’t forget to include your contact details. Finally, the letter doesn’t need to be long – definitely less than one side of A4 (but not in font size 6!).

Also please note that a query letter is not required for short story submissions to Fairlight Shorts.

We prefer a Word document or, if not possible, a PDF.

No; we only accept email submissions.

We aim to respond to all literary submissions as soon as possible, certainly within three months. We will be able to publish only a small number of the stories and longer fiction we receive, so if we don’t think we can publish your writing, we will try to let you know as soon as possible.

We don’t follow the ‘rule’ that you should only submit to one place at a time. Feel free to submit your writing widely – it stands the best chance of publication that way – but please be sure to contact us and withdraw your submission if it is accepted elsewhere.

Unfortunately, with limited resources we aren’t able to give feedback for submissions that we are not taking forward to publication. However, there are some good companies out there who will read your writing and give you feedback for a fee. (There are also some not-so-good ones!) We would recommend Cornerstones Literary Consultancy as an established, reputable manuscript reviewer.

We’d also highly recommend that you think about taking a creative writing course if you haven’t taken one before – not only is it a great way to brush up on your writing skills, but you also get exposure to lots of other writers and writing styles. Many writers’ circles (where writers meet to give feedback to each other) arise as a result of writers meeting each other on a writing course.

We get asked this question a lot, so we commissioned Lynn Morrison, a marketing executive with more than twenty years of experience, to write these two books:

We prefer to receive a section from the beginning of your book. You may think the middle bit is the best bit, but it won’t do justice to your novel if we only get that bit. So please send us the first 10,000 words.

Not at all! But please don’t send us more than 10,000 words. Anywhere between 8,000 and 10,000 words will be fine, so please feel free to break off where it feels most natural to you and the story.

A synopsis should be a summary of the events of the book, ideally in the same order in which they occur in the novel. Sometimes people will put a brief description of the book in the first paragraph, e.g. ‘This is a mystery about a man who…’, which can be helpful, and we don’t mind if you compare your writing/subject matter to another author’s. The way the synopsis is written can have a flavour of your writing style, but that is not really important. What is more important is that the synopsis gives a clear description of the events of the book, including the ending.  An ideal synopsis should be about one side of A4 (but not in font size 6!).

No. If you have previously self-published your novel and not been as happy with the results as you’d hoped, then we are fine for you to submit it to us for consideration for wider publication.

We think that self-publishing is a fantastic innovation which has revolutionised the industry and empowered writers to connect directly with their readership. However, we recognise that it’s not always an easy journey and that it may not be for everyone. With over eight million books on the e-book platforms, it’s hard for quietly well-written original fiction to find its way to an audience drowning under a deluge of romance/slasher/erotica genre series novels. And unless you want to work 24/7 becoming a marketing expert and salesperson extraordinaire, it’s still quite tough to get self-published books accepted by the publishing industry’s distribution chain and stocked as physical copies in bookstores.

Unlike some traditional publishers, we don’t believe that if you have previously self-published your book, you’ve ‘muddied’ the waters. So long as your book follows the rest of the guidelines here, please feel free to submit it to us.

Each submission should not exceed the 5,000-word limit. We do not have a minimum word count and are happy to consider flash fiction.

We accept up to three submissions of short stories at a time by the same author. Your stories should be sent in the same email, but in separate documents.

If the submission is simultaneous (i.e. the story has been sent to more than one publisher or online magazine at the same time) you should notify us via e-mail if your work is accepted elsewhere first.

Please ensure that you have full ownership of the work you are submitting and that it has not been plagiarised. If we publish your story, we will ask you for first exclusive rights to publication of the story, which means that the short story should not have been published before, either in an anthology or a magazine, online or in print.

Unfortunately, no. We don’t receive any payment from readers who read the story on the website, and we don’t place the stories behind a subscription-based paywall like some online short story providers do. The aim of Fairlight Shorts is really to help promote the writers and the art of the short story, and to make high-quality writing freely accessible to readers. (NB: This does not include novellas, which we publish in the traditional way.)

No; please see the answer above.