Submission Guidelines

We have two open submissions calls right now:

Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology and the 2nd Annual Arthur Smith Poetry Prize

All manuscripts published by Madville Publishing undergo a rigorous vetting process before they are accepted for publication. While we do not accept unsolicited manuscripts, we do accept queries by email and we also sometimes solicit manuscripts from those authors whose work fits our catalog. We send promising manuscripts out for review to published authors and professional editors who write reviewers’ reports detailing the works’ strengths and weaknesses before we decide whether or not to offer an author a contract. Reviewers are anonymous, because we want them to feel free to share honest reviews with us. Just know that they are widely read, talented authors in their own rights. They are familiar with everything in our catalog, and have been with us since we started, so with this in mind, the best way to learn what we like is to become familiar with the books we currently publish.

PLEASE NOTE: Be brief in your initial query. We’ll let you know if we’d like to know more. No matter how wonderful your project, we may be swamped, and long emails tend to be overlooked if they come from strangers.

Formatting

After you have sent us a query, and if we ask you to submit your manuscript, this is how we would prefer that you format it:

Prose should be submitted in 12 pt., Times New Roman, double spaced, one inch margins and pages numbered. If it is not a contest submission, make sure your name and contact information is in the header and on the title page.

Poetry should be 12 pt., Times New Roman, single spaced, one inch margins, one poem per page, and pages numbered. Full manuscripts should include credits for previously published poems and a table of contents.

Unless we communicate with you directly and request your manuscript, we only accept submissions through Submittable. You can see all our open Calls for submissions by following this link to our Submittable page:

submit