What sort of publishers are we?
We are a traditional publisher - that means we do not charge writers for publishing.
We are rare in the degree of freedom we offer to writers. We aim to be an open door in an industry where most doors are closed and closely guarded.
A refuge for writers
In the past decade at least it has become increasingly difficult for professional writers to find publishers. Even when you have a publisher, they are often unwilling to publish your best work, and only want your more commercial output. This distinct trend has been disastrous for publishing and writing, and has resulted in the best work being unable to find its way to the public.
What are we looking for?
We are looking for work of a high standard.
Because our aim is to provide an outlet for the kind of work that is currently being neglected by most publishers with their almost exclusively commercial preferences, we will not ask you to persuade us of the commercial viability of your book, only of its quality.
Your book doesn't have to be perfect for you to submit it to us and you don't even have to be a professional author (earning your living from writing) but you do have to write to a standard that would be called professional.
In the case of non-fiction we require that the book be well written and well researched.
We have no preconceptions as to genre or style, or even originality; we are only concerned with quality.We accept fiction and non-fiction.
We accept; all genres of fiction, history, local history, art, philosophy, politics, biography, auto-biography and poetry. We accept theatre scripts, but not screenplays.
What happens if we decide to publish your book?
We will suggest any improvements or make any editorial imput we think appropriate which you are at liberty to ignore.
We will ask you to provide a proofread final version of your book, that is ready for typesetting requiring no corrections or changes.
We will give you a contract and then we are responsible for the publishing of your book. We will send you the files to approve before they go to the printer.
After the book has been published we will usually give you royalty statements every six months. We will pay 10% royalties which is the industry standard.
Once you are a Levellers Press author we are likely to be willing to publish your future work, as we know that authors require continuity of support from their publisher in the long term, rather than merely one book at a time.
At present we are unable to offer authors an advance against royalties - but we pay royalties after three months. Our only income is from the sale of books.
Submissions
When submitting your book to us, please simply send us the whole thing. THE FILE MUST HAVE THE BOOK'S WHOLE TITLE AND YOUR NAME. ('my book' or 'final version' will just get lost in the ether.) Please also add a short letter describing the book and your intention with it, if that is not self evident. You might also tell us a bit about yourself.
A note of guidance: We urge writers to avoid having too many chapters; it is unprofessional and slows down the narrative. A book with a new chapter heading every few pages will not be popular with us. You are writing a book not a film script. In drama, scene changes speed the narrative, in books, chapters slow it down.