We only accept responses to call outs (mainly for inclusion in anthologies). Keep an eye on our posts for new call outs – we encourage you to submit for anthologies and events – if we like your work enough to publish single items more than once, we ask to see more… We want to receive submissions from writers from the LGBT and Global Majority communities, older writers, and from writers with disabilities. We want to receive submissions from Deaf writers and Blind writers. You can submit by BSL in a video or by audio file if that’s easier for you, more details on our Submittable page.

Any unsolicited submissions not related to callouts will NOT be read!

This information will help you to get accepted: We mainly publish fiction and poetry. When we ever publish nonfiction it is because we found it for ourselves and were too excited by it not to publish it, So DON’T send us your memoirs, we aren’t the right people.

We will not accept AI generated or AI assisted work, please don’t send it. Any work found to be AI generated will be rejected.

We will not under any circumstances publish erotica, or anything that denigrates people from LGBT or Global Majority communities. We are not interested in religious works or horror of any kind, especially gore or torture.  We detest sexist stereotypes and deplore derivative plotlines, sloppy writing and clichés, and are bored by romance and chick-lit. Other than that, we will consider most genres provided they are beautifully written, imaginative, and have narrative substance and persuasive characterisation. 

It would be a REALLY good idea to explore the information on this website – there are video and audio extracts and descriptions of what we’ve already published dotted about all over the place, so have a dig about and get a feel for what makes us send single word email responses that say – Yes. (some of our authors can vouch for this, we really do do it).

We cannot afford to pay advances (yet), but will pay royalties.

We don’t want to see first drafts! Third draft, maybe! If you don’t think it’s ready, don’t send it.  There are agencies who will give you feedback on your first draft: they charge. Arachne Press tries to treat authors (and potential authors) how we’d like to be treated ourselves. This doesn’t mean we will read all 1200 pages of your epic if we don’t like the first three chapters, life is too short. It does mean that if we reject your work you may be offered brief feedback. More detailed feedback is available for a fee. It will always be honest. If we think there’s a market for your work elsewhere, we will point you to it. If you’d rather we didn’t give you feedback, we won’t. Personally, we’d rather someone told us we were wasting our time, or what was so awful about it, than a polite no thank you; but it is up to you.

HOW TO GET A COLLECTION OR A NOVEL PUBLISHED BY ARACHNE PRESS Send us something for an anthology. If we publish it and you show us you would be exciting to work with we will invite you to submit something more substantial. If we do invite you to send a collection, we would like it to be a collection, not just everything you’ve ever written held together with an elastic band. If you discover a theme in what you’ve written, then exclude things that don’t fit, and think about an order for your stories. We want to read what you think is your best work, not the things you rushed off over a cup of coffee. We can only afford to publish a handful of books each year and we are programmed at least 2 years in advance, so it really has to excite us, and we may not be the right outlet for your work. We will confirm receipt, after that you will dwell in silence and darkness until we have something to say, please don’t make enquiries, we’ll be as quick as we can.