Submission Guidelines
Lethe Press rarely considers unsolicited manuscripts. If you have a project you believe may be of interest to us, please send a short query to us via email. Do not send print materials at any time, and please do not send us your manuscript unsolicited. Please do look over the types of books we publish before sending us your material, and understand that as a small press our resources (human and financial) are limited; it may take us some time to get back to you.
Send queries to editor@lethepressbooks.com. Thank you for your interest in Lethe Press.
Please be advised that Lethe Press forthcoming schedule for 2009 is full; we will not be reading new manuscripts for submission until after October. Please do not query us until then.
Note to Lethe authors:
About Formatting Submissions: Final M.S.S. submitted by authors to Lethe Press should be formatted in Times New Roman font. There should be a specified style name for the title, the chapter titles, and the main text. "Normal" is OK; don't use "Body Text"; all main text should be in the same style. Syles must be consistent. Any other styles should be identified in their style name (e.g., "poetry" "spacer," "centered," "handwritten letter," "nonindented normal," etc.). Heading 1, Heading 2, body text 2, etc. are not acceptable as style names (because they potentially conflict with the stylesheets in the computer software at the receiving end and/or with html conversion for kindle and ebooks). Any centered text should be centered with a style command, not with tabs or spaces to push the text over.
If you have a preference for fonts, especially ornamental fonts for titles and chapter headings, please let us know.
Paragraphs should be indented .25 inch with a stylesheet command. Do not use tabs to identify paragraphs.
Replace double hyphens with em-dashes; period, space, period, space, period with an ellipsis.
Do not use underlining for italics. Do not use BOLD for italics. If you use Bold or Bold Italics text in your m.s., make a note on the first page.
Do not use ALL CAPS for titles; put titles in Title Case. (Titles should be given a style name, like "Title," "Chapter Title," "Half Title.")
Do not use two spaces between sentences. And do not use an extra carriage return between paragraphs unless you intend a break in the narrative.
Make sure that all leading apostrophes (as in '70s, 'cause, 'tween, etc.) are apostrophes and not open-single-quotes. Leading apostrophes MUST be entered manually; the wordprocessor software will almost always make a error and think you are starting a single-quoted quotation.
Periods and commas should be inside quotation marks.
Note to Graphic artists:
Please submit your cover image(s), attached to email, as:
1) a 300 dpi CMYK TIFF (without any title or text), see size requirements below.
2) if you have planned how the text and title should be placed, also send a copy of the cover
with title and text as you envision it. Please plan to use widely available fonts. In most cases, Lethe covers
use the same font faces as those in the interior of the book. Feel free to inquire what fonts are already being used.
3) If possible, also send the original Photoshop (or other art app) file with layers intact (not flattened).
(This could be a very large file and may require special handling, but our having this file makes minor adjustments so much easier.)
4) And be sure to include in your cover letter email, how you'd like to be credited on the copyright page.
If your file(s) are over 10 Mb and can't be sent as an email attachment, please inquire about other methods for sending.
Lethe's Production Manager, Toby Johnson, has a mac idisk at http://public.me.com/tobyjohnso
You can contact him at the email address below to get the password.
Size requirements: Lethe Press books are generally in one of three sizes: 5.5x8.5 in, 5x8 inch, or 6x9 in. For best results,
you submit the cover graphic sized to fit the cover of the book. (again, feel free to inquire). Book covers need to be sized
.125 inch bigger at top and bottom and outside edge than the final size of the book. This .125 inch will be trimmed away
in final processing. AND you should leave an additional .125 inch margin all around inside the trim size of the book;
that margin should be filled with your background but contain nothing of importance to the image because it could also get trimmed
(or run over into the spine).
Spine width cannot be calculated until after the final layout of the interior is completed (because the spine width is dependent on the page count).
So please don't include the spine in your image.
If you are doing front and back, please submit two separate TIFFs, one for the front, one for the back. Don't include the spine. (If you need to do a wraparound image, please let us know in advance so we can accommodate.).
If your front cover image includes a background that would be appropriate for the backcover of the book, please also submit that background
as a properly sized 300 dpi CMYK TIFF.
To download the actual template for the book, go to http://lightningsource.com, do NOT log in, choose File Creation > Cover Template Generator; enter the ISBN, confirm that the page count is correct, do NOT include price in barcode. It will be sent in the format you choose to the email address you enter.
IF you download the template, do not move or rearrange any of the items on the template, including the barcode.
Usually final book layout is done by Toby Johnson. His email address is tobyjohnso@aol.com (note the truncation of his last name--no final "n".)
About ads for Icarus
Ads and images for Icarus: The Magazine of Gay Speculative Fiction should be sent to tobyjohnso@aol.com
They should be prepared as 300 dpi, RGB jpgs, sized at 100%. The files should be named with the submitter's name.
They can also be sent as pdfs generated from such 300 dpi, RGB jpgs with fonts embedded.
A quarter page ad is 3.65 inches wide x 4.625 inches high.
A half page ad is 7.3125 inches wide x 4.625 inches high (horizontal) OR 3.65 inches wide x 9.25 inches high (vertical)
A full page ad is 7.375 inches wide x 9.25 inches high. Full page ads can also bleed over the edge and fill the entire page.
Such ads should be 8.5 x 11 inches. Be sure to allow .25 inches off the outside edge and .125 inches off top and bottom to be trimmed.
(So don't put text or essential images in the trim space).
All ads/images can be adjusted a little during page layout. So you can give yourself a little latitude.