Submitting a manuscript

Is your manuscript suitable for GoldStar Books?

We publish good fiction with a minimum word count of 50,000. We will consider most genre as long as the manuscript is the original work of the submitting author and is of high quality. We have no objection to works containing adult (even erotic) material but we will not accept pornography or any work that promotes violence, racism, or hatred generally.

We do not publish poetry, children's books, or works on the occult.

We will consider collections of short stories if there are sufficient for a book-sized compilation, i.e. minimum total word count of 30,000. We will also consider non-fiction manuscripts if the subject appeals to us.

Making your submission

The manuscript submission process is a three stage operation:

1. Tell us about your book

Please contact us in the first instance using our Application Form. Give us a brief outline of your book together with a word count, some details about yourself, and your ideas about the type of readers who would enjoy your work.

2. Preview material

If your proposal falls within our guidelines, we will ask you to submit the first chapter plus one other chapter of your choice. Please bear in mind that the first chapter should immediately grab the reader's attention and keep him or her interested enough to want to read more.

If we are impressed by the preview material we will ask you to submit the complete manuscript together with a reading fee based on the word count.

3. The decision making process

Our decision will normally be one of the following:

• We will reject your manuscript if it (a) does not comply with our criteria for acceptable material, or (b) if it contains too many errors, particularly spelling mistakes.
• If we feel your preview material has absolutely no chance of success, we will not give you false hopes but we will explain fully why our decision has been reached.
• If the material shows promise but the writing is not up to the required standard, we will explain the problems and ask you to correct them before you re-submit. Or we may recommend you consider our Editorial Services which are chargeable.
• If we accept your manuscript for publication we will send you an accurate quotation for editing, typesetting, and printing your book.
• If you accept our estimate, we will ask you to pay 50% of the agreed publication charges.

Preparing your manuscript

Please follow these steps to ensure your manuscript meets our requirements:

• Your manuscript must be in Microsoft Word format or in Rich Text Format (RTF).
• Please set the page size to A5 with all margins set to 1.5 cm.
• Please ensure the work is left-justified.
• The file should have single line spacing.
• Do not use any special formatting other than normal body text, chapter headings and italics where appropriate. Do not use bold characters.
• Use double-quotes (") to surround any dialogue.
• Do not use spaces or tabs to indent the first lines of paragraphs.
• Use only one space after the end of each sentence.

Your manuscript must give a good impression

Always remember you rarely get a second chance with a first impression so make the first impression count. Our aim is to encourage and promote new authors but we can only help you to succeed if you are prepared to help yourself.

Click here to read about our Editorial Services