Nightingale & Sparrow Press chapbook submissions will open in August 2022.
Nightingale and Sparrow aims to soar through written and visual arts. We want to publish work that takes the earthly and makes it ethereal. Send us your deepest thoughts, most poignant memories, and flights of fancy.
Before you submit: read, read, read!
- Read through the above mission and below guidelines and ensure your work complies,
- Read through a title or two from our catalogue, if you’re able (you can get to a digital copy instantly!) to see the sorts of work we’ve published already.
- Read through the archives of Nightingale & Sparrow, our literary magazine, to get a taste for the kinds of work we especially love.
- Read through your manuscript one more time to check for any last changes or edits.
Nightingale & Sparrow Press is looking for chapbook manuscripts that meet the following criteria:
Genres: While we’re partial to poetry, we’ll certainly consider prose (fiction or CNF), photography, or mixed media – if you think it’s a good fit and it can be printed in chapbook form, send it our way!
Topics: We want to be as flexible as possible when it comes to potential topics—we’re a multi-passionate team and love so many different styles and subjects! That being said, our mission is a great place to start; we want to see the trials and tribulations of humanity connected to something beyond the mortal realm.
Previous publication/Simultaneous submissions: Pieces of your manuscript can certainly be previously published (we like about 25-50% best, but that’s a flexible range!), but we ask that the chapbook as a full work be unpublished. If a press has gone dark and left your previously published chapbook (that otherwise meets our guidelines) without a home, we will consider it, but know that if the choice comes between two manuscripts, all else being equal, we’ll likely pick the unpublished chapbook. Of course, simultaneous submissions are fine—just let us know if your work is accepted elsewhere before we’ve had a chance to snag it ourselves!
Page count: 24 to 50 pages
Word count: As long as your text can fit comfortably within the page count above, we don’t have a strong preference! For font, we prefer Garamond.
Submit your manuscript (body text only – we’ll get your title pages, acknowledgements, bio, TOC, etc. if your manuscript is selected for publication!) with no identifying information in through our submission form.
You may send more than one chapbook if you’d like, but only one may be chosen. Please send multiple submissions in separate form responses.
Please allow us up to two months following the close of submissions to respond to all submitted manuscripts. *Like so many others, our staff has had many struggles to contend with through 2020. We’re currently finalising our full-length submissions, then moving on to chapbooks—thank you in advance for your patience!*
Feel free to contact our staff with any further questions.
Chosen chapbooks:
N&S will choose up to four manuscripts to be published following each reading period. We will work with these authors to put the finishing touches on their work and get it ready for publication. Each chapbook will be scheduled for publication at some point in 2022/2023 (tentatively March, June, September, or December).
Each author will receive 50% of the profits from their chapbook and will have the opportunity to purchase author copies at a discounted rate.
Published chapbooks will be available on Amazon and through expanded distribution, including Barnes & Noble and library distributors. Kindle editions will be offered for all titles, as well as a digital PDF for maximum accessibility.