Submissions

Submissions

Team

Got what it takes to create a Choc Lit hero or a stunning Ruby Fiction book?

Please read our criteria and guidelines below and follow the instructions. We’re looking for quality stories not quantity. We are a traditional publisher, our paperbacks are distributed to the trade wholesalers and available from most good bookshops, online stores and libraries. We are also represented by a UK, Australian & New Zealand sales team.  Our eBooks and audio books are on all the major platforms and distributed to libraries.
We do have a three month review period as all manuscripts are reviewed, in the first instance, by our Tasting Panel who are genuine readers.
We recommend you read a couple of our novels before submitting, to ensure your manuscript fits our criteria. We do not wish to waste your time or that of our panel. Thank you!

Please DO NOT email any unsolicited  attachments (synopsis, first three chapters, etc.) as they will be lost in our spam folder and you won’t get a response. Ensure you follow these guidelines.

Submitting a novel to Choc Lit or Ruby Fiction:

Choc Lit novels have a romance at the heart and include the hero’s point of view .
For thrillers and women’s fiction without a romance or heroes point of view, please submit to our new imprint Ruby Fiction.
You can do so here.

 Submitting to Choc Lit:

 Criteria:

  • fiction
  • a romance at the heart
  • a male hero and includes his point of view
  • suitable for an adult audience
  • 60,000 to 100,000 words long
  • in English
  • completed – we can’t consider works in progress
  • previously unpublished
  • not currently accepted by any other publisher or agent
  • contemporary, suspense, historical, fantasy, time-slip, etc.

 Submitting to Ruby Fiction:

 Criteria:

            • fiction
            • suitable for an adult audience
            • 60,000 to 100,000 words long
            • in English
            • completed – we can’t consider works in progress
            • previously unpublished
            • not currently accepted by any other publisher or agent
            • fiction that does not include the hero’s point of view: thrillers, saga, mystery, chick lit, historical, fantasy, etc.

Submission Guidelines

We are not looking for one book deals so we do discourage you to submit if this is what you seek. We look to work with our authors on a long term basis to help develop their careers. We strongly advise that you have your novel assessed before you send it to us, especially for debut authors, so that you have a chance to correct any obvious problems with your story or style. There are many organisations offering manuscript assessment services. Once your novel is ready to be submitted, please complete the Submission Form on the next page.
Please do not email your manuscript to us unless we contact you. Any unsolicited  attachments emailed  will be lost in our spam folder and you won’t get a response! 

Notes to help your submission:

Remember that a synopsis provides the whole story of your novel in a nutshell – the main characters, their motivations and a summary of the plot, including the ending.
* Social media activity (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and online skills are necessary for all Choc Lit and Ruby Fiction authors as we expect them to be proactive and help us by pursuing publicity opportunities. We no longer accept submissions without an online platform.
* Provide your writing experience, any success in short stories or writing competitions, self published success or anything else you feel is relevant.
* If you are an unpublished author, please state the manuscript assessment service used.
* If we feel your synopsis has met our criteria we will request, via email, that you complete the our Submission Form and submit this together with your complete novel in MS Word or RTF (text file). Please present these as professionally as possible. Our submissions are reviewed by our Tasting Panel, independent readers who can be quite picky about badly presented manuscripts, so don’t give them an excuse to fail yours.

Any agented  submissions need to be submitted direct to submissions@choc-lit.com or to your Choc Lit contact and not through this portal. Thank you!

Believe you meet our criteria? Click the Online Form button to complete your submission.