Submission Guidelines and Considerations
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- Published: Wednesday, 19 October 2016 20:37
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Submission Guidelines and Considerations
Submissions will open on May 1, 2026
and will close on July 1, 2026
Do you have a creative book project that you would like us to consider for publication? We will soon be open for new submissions though we are still sending out letters to authors of some of the 2025 samples, specifically the ones which made our second round of vetting but did not make the very top of that list.
What we ask for is an email to this address describing your project or manuscript and including a sample of approximately 20 pages. We publish poetry, short stories, novels, novellas (if accompanied by other stuff), plays, memoirs, and creative non-fiction. So tell us what you have and let your sample speak for you. If we are somewhat interested, the sample will go through a second round of reading. If we find the sample irresistible, we will contact you and ask to see the full ms (doc or docx is fine). If your sample makes it to the second round of reading, but not the full-manuscript stage, we will try to let you know. If you're reading this in April of 2026, we should be almost finished working through the 2025 batch. We have often been overwhelmed by samples which deserved full manuscript reading; however, we can only ask for a small fraction of those.
If we request and then receive your full manuscript, it will be read and evaluated by one of us editors and also sent to a paid outside reader for a careful evaluation. Based on these evaluations, we will offer to publish it as it is, or with revisions, or we will decline the opportunity. We often have gathered suggestions on ways to improve the work. We'll pass those along to you whether or not we decide to publish your work.
You should know that we are a small press with a very small promotional budget. We send out 10-15 copies with press releases to various newspapers, journals, and magazines for review; we get the book into our distributor's catalog, and maintain a web presence. And we give authors 20 free copies. But we depend on our authors to do any further PR. Several have done amazing jobs in promoting their work, organizing readings and signing events at their local libraries or bookstores, reading their works on radio shows or at other public events, getting their works reviewed in local papers or literary journals. But a genuinely attention-grabbing campaign is expensive. Please, do not tell yourself (as one of our early authors did) that you'll be on the cover of People Magazine in a year. Tell yourself, "I have created a beautiful book, one which challenged me, and whose very existence rewards me and the people I care about."
You should probably also know that the Delmonicos are "seasoned seniors," aka "elders" aka "crones." We have been slowing down, and hope to turn Golden Antelope over to new owners in 2026. Our submission period has shrunk from six months to two, and we're trying to figure out the best way to help our current authors as GAP transitions. Our hopeful new owners will continue as Golden Antelope. Anyone who wants to take their books to a different publisher or to self-publish instead of staying can of course do so. They own their copyrights; we'll give them their files and covers, though they'll need independent ISBNs since the ones we bought in bulk are inextricably tied to Golden Antelope, Blazing Sapphire, or Naciketas.
If we publish your book, you will not pay us anything--though if you want more than your 20 free copies you will pay wholesale (45% of the retail price) for the extras. Once your "distribution threshold" is reached, you will receive royalties. (A distribution threshold is the number of books that must be sold for us to recover our publication expenses--the money we've paid to readers, artists, graphic designers, printers, distributor, ebook maker, etc. We spend in the neighborhood of $1000 for each book we produce, and we aim for about $5 per copy in publishers' compensation, so the distribution threshold is about 200 books, counting ebooks.) Royalties start at 30% of our "publishers compensation," and if book sales reach 500 copies the royalty percentage will increase to 60% of our publishers comp.
The books, once they are uploaded and approved, become available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble within about a week. Through our distributor, Ingram Content Group, they quickly become available all around the world. Though ebooks are optional and refusing the option means a somewhat lower distribution threshold, most of our authors have been choosing to have ebooks. Nowadays ebooks come with a (computerized) text-to-speech capacity so that listening to the book is possible.
So far Golden Antelope Press has published 54 books. We've also published 17 books as Blazing Sapphire Press for works relating to the literature, philosophy, and religions of India (Neal's area of expertise). And we've published 16 books as Naciketas Press for non-fiction works of general interest, and research not connected with India.
If you have any questions or would like to pitch a book to Golden Antelope, just send us an email and sample at the site email address (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.). The Nacitketas and Blazing Sapphire websites aren't up-to-date, but emails to ndelmonico@sbcglobal are welcome.
Neal and Betsy Delmonico