DAW Books

Hey, that's great news! Means your mms is well past the slushpile stage. Here's hoping for more good news.

Change to DAW submission guildlines

DAW books recently made a change to their submission guidelines. After the first three months, they no longer require exclusivity on submitted manuscripts.

From the site:

An excellent change from a publisher I continue to hear nothing but praise for.

That is great news.

Just popping in to say I submitted a novel to DAW in October (2014), followed up in December and heard to expect to wait for another 2-3 months. I'm a little nervy about following up again in March - I don't want to be That Pain in the Butt Author - even though the email I got said it would be fine.

They want the complete manuscript

I’m not ready to publish just yet but I did notice that DAW books want the authors to submit the complete manuscript before they will consider your novel. Is this the norm?

DAW books say on their website, “Please send us the entire manuscript with a cover letter.”
http://www.penguin.com/meet/publishers/daw/

Maybe it's a new policy to weed out people who haven't written their manuscript, or people whose manuscripts are shorter than 80,000 words?

It cuts out the middle stage of partials. They have to streamline the process somehow; I've now heard from 3 people that DAW can still take a year for consideration. Even on agent subs!

I think Tor also requests the full MS from non-agented folks, and Baen does as well. So, not unusual for SF/F publishers.

Looking for...

I would love to read a juicy DAW thread - where should I search? Penguin?

I've moved swala's inquiry about DAW to this thread.

DAW is still flourishing under the Penguin Random family.

DAW is actually doing something I'd hoped they'd do about ten years ago: reissuing the late Tanith Lee's work. I'm happy to see this, but sad that they couldn't do it in her lifetime.

I grew up with this publisher. I'd love to send something there, but not at a year's wait. Have the submission times gone down any?

I grew up with this publisher. I'd love to send something there, but not at a year's wait. Have the submission times gone down any?[/QUOTE]

I'm on month 3 - I know they received the manuscript. I'm desperate for some reassurance! Does no response mean something?

swala said:

I'm on month 3 - I know they received the manuscript. I'm desperate for some reassurance! Does no response mean something?

Click to expand...

There's one report on The (Submission) Grinder that was a rejection at 36 days (sometime last month). Even if the editor loves a book, there's a lot of waiting. Things have to go to the accounting department for estimates on what sort of numbers the book *might* earn. If those are good, they go to a larger panel of editors and senior staff to pitch why your book is right for the company at this point in time.

Some editors may tell you they are interested before they go through all those steps, some may not. The best thing to do is sit tight and write another book while you wait.

Best of luck!

Oops! I forgot to post a follow-up.

At about a year's wait, I got a nice rejection letter. They said it was interesting, but not right for them. Alas...
They did mention that they have new processes in place to (hopefully) reduce the wait times in the future. But, they didn't elaborate on the plan.

Best of luck to everyone!

DAW's submission guidelines at this link say they accept unagented subs, but they require a three-month exclusive hardcopy submission. Does anyone know if these guidelines are up-to-date? This seems kind of retro.

They generally ask for an exclusive submission for any MS they have in slush or under consideration (unless it's been submitted by an agent). From what I understand they are very serious about that.

Most publishers that have open submissions still require paper copies because it further cuts down on the amount of unpublishable material they receive.

Is no news good news? I sent MS on Jan 16 - received my postcard stating it had arrived in mid-March and not a peep since. I've read that others were notified by mail that their MS had passed to the second read.

I know there's a thread for them somewhere in here, but I cannot find it, no matter how I type it into the search field. This announcement popped up in my Twitter feed, that DAW is switching from hardcopy submissions to electronic (finally!). https://twitter.com/dawbooks/status/936682051771797505

Here's the thread. The trick to better searching here is to use the Google Custom Search box at the bottom of the page instead of the standard site search at the top.

ETA: A mod should be able to merge this into the original thread.

Just use the Index.

I'm going to merge this with the extant thread.

Yay, DAW joins the 21st century...just after I stopped querying the first mms of a big LGBTQ epic fantasy arc, and sent it to a small press I like.

They have reopened to submissions. Digital only~ http://www.penguin.com/publishers/daw/

I submitted today, so fingers crossed!

For those interested:

Subbed: 6/19/18
Rejection: 7/5/18