Publishers?

Are there any good publishers you can refer me to who are accepting new submissions from new sci-fi authors?

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You'd be best off trying to get an agent tbh, as most publishers require that you approach through the agents. Try AgentQuery or QueryTracker

You might find a few publishers that are willing to take unsolicited MSs, but I don't think there's many. The small presses often do, but it's whether your book would fit what they're looking for.

Separated from the goals thread into its own.

See: Writers Market website. [Google it]

AryaT92 said:

See: Writers Market website. [Google it]

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Writer's market is good, but Agent Query, etc. are free and provide information that's just as useful. It's also a good idea to go checking the agents listed on P&E or finding a thread on them here to make sure they're legit. Not for you, btw, for the person who asked before.

I'm with Kaitie. I just went to AgentQuery yesterday, and I'm SOOOO using that when I finish my MS. You can search by genre, then you go look at the agent's profile and webpage and figure out if they'd even want to look at your story, and see whether they're accepting queries and stuff. There are several dozen pages of agent names.

^ There you have it AgentQuery, free and easy. Good luck!

Doesn't Tor accept unsolicited submissions? You can check their site.

Jess Haines said:

Doesn't Tor accept unsolicited submissions? You can check their site.

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As I understand, Tor does accept unsolicited submissions... but their slush pile is about a year deep.

One or two large houses, like Tor, still accept un-agented submissions, but the wait is anywhere from one to two years. If your goal is to make a career out of writing, your best bet is to seek an agent who represents science fiction. Agentquery.com is a good resource for this.

Just to add that new writers should be sending to the same markets/agents as established writers. There are no special "new writer" markets (with the exception of some contests and grants).

Ralan.com is a good website to check out for new markets.

Who publishes the books you like to read?

Those are the publishers you should be approaching. Follow their guidelines to the letter.

Get yourself a copy of the Writers Handbook, or the Writers year book and a highlighter pen. Pick out publishers and agents who handle what you write, then do some additiona research on them.

Check out their website if they have one, have a look for them on the background checks forum here.

Follow submissions to the letter.

Also, as others have said, look at who publishes the sort of books you like to read, have a wander around waterstones to see who else is publishing those books now. Also, it's always worth seeing what the trends are. For instance, if one publishing house in particular currently has a lot of nano-technology inspired stories on their normally mixed list, then they will probably not want to buy another one(bear in mind how long it takes from acceptance to print)

That said, there are some publishers who ONLY publish a certain type of book. There are publishers who only publish paranormal romance, or sword and sourcery.

The main thing here is to do your research.

agentquery is a great site. And free.