Submission Guidelines/FAQ

I want to submit my book or my project for consideration? How do I do that?

Basically, tell us:

Other than that please just follow the specific formatting guidelines for each imprint (again, see below)

So what about royalties? Do I get paid? Does anyone get paid?

You can keep them all as far as we're concerned. You just have to pick Option 1 (see below). Oh and you have to sell some books.

We use various POD companies to produce books associated with us, the Amazon Createspace platform being the main one for now (we might use other POD printing services in the future, not sure).

With most POD platforms, royalties usually depend on the price you pick for your book and what percentage of it that Createspace (or whichever POD) takes from that. Whatever you earn from it (pretty much fuck all in our experience) it's yours if you want it or not. There are two options that go towards accomplishing or not accomplishing this:

OPTION 1

If you reckon you'll sell shitloads of books and want to get your hands on the royalties or even if you have no great ambitions for sales but are more comfortable receiving the small amounts into your own bank account, then it's definitely best to just set up your own Createspace account (or whatever POD we’re using to produce your book, if it's a standard paperback it'll usually be Createspace) and associate it with your bank account for royalties to be paid straight in from Amazon, etc (it's a lot of fun, you have to fill in an American tax form and everything! But also, it takes no time at all should you wish to do this. Dostoyevsky Wannabe can still be the publisher on the physical book and we'll provide a home for your book on our website and do what we can to promote it).

OPTION 2

If you're more realistic and/or unambitious or maybe even the kind who laughs derisively at the mere possibility that you might make money from writing books, then we're happy to upload the book to our Createspace account but you'll be forfeiting the 14 pence/cents per annum that your book might make financially because we basically can't be bothered to get involved with transferring money here and there. In short, if you're worried about money then best to start your own Createspace account and do it that way.

Fascinating Side Note: Our 'Cassette' books and some of our collaborative 'Experimental' imprints and Samplers are in-house derived things so will always fall under OPTION 2.

Please send all submissions to:

dostoyevskywannabe@gmail.com. If one of our guest-editors has requested a piece from you for one of our samplers, then feel free to send the piece to them (and us, if you like).

I've submitted a book but haven't heard back from you?

This either means that we just haven't had time to look over what you've sent and maybe there are lots of things going on with us (did we mention we have day jobs?) and we're about to get back to you to say we want to work with you on your books or it means we just don't want to publish it and it's not for us. We're afraid we can't give any feedback to you about books that we don't wish to publish because we just haven't got time to reply to everything. Plus our feedback would probably be completely useless to you and your book is probably great and we're just stupid for not liking it. Send it to someone else? They might appreciate its greatness and then you can silently hold a grudge against us for not realising and gloat at us when the book does well elsewhere.

How do I format the interior of my book?

We answer that question below but suffice to say this is a two-stage process:

STAGE 1

When initially sending your manuscript don't worry about formatting it to our rules. It's unfair on you because we might not go for it and then you've spent the time satisfying our guidelines for nothing. So send it however you like in a Word doc or a Google doc or whatever. The only thing to keep in mind at this stage is that we can't print in colour text or use colour images in the interior of the book. Black and white images are fine. If we don't end up being interested in your book then this way, you won't have wasted extra time. If we do want to go ahead then we can move on to stage 2

STAGE 2

Everyone hates formatting rules, right?

But despite the fact we said we'd never ever become so strict about formatting rules, they've become really important and essential to us being able to keep doing what we do and without them Dostoyevsky Wannabe can't keep getting those books out there so please follow them, you don't want us to spend our lives removing carriage-returns surely

You too can be an Olivetti boy (or girl) by following these simple formatting and submission rules for each imprint. It's simple and painless, then you'll be free to cut loose and "Do the Skate! or 'Go Live on Facebook' or whatever it is the cool grown-ups are doing these days".

Please click here to see how we need you to format your manuscript once we've agreed to go ahead with the book.

WHAT WE'RE NOT INTERESTED IN PUBLISHING

As if it wasn’t obvious by the things we post and re-post on Facebook and Twitter and the like, we at both Dostoyevsky Wannabe and Swimmers Club will reserve the right not to publish writers or writing that we feel is racist, homophobic, or misogynistic or writers who we feel have displayed similar attitudes.

We're very much left-leaning people, both culturally and politically, so much so that we do aim to try and strike a balance between the freedoms of speech necessary for fiction to contain much of the necessary ambiguity and nuance that can be found in everyday situations. Striking that balance is something that no doubt could lead to some uncomfortable themes within the books and stories that we publish but it is also something which has a much longer history within literature and within culture than we can tackle here in this relatively insignificant disclaimer (go educate yourselves on it). We’re a tiny organisation so if somehow anything like this has got through our submissions process and is already set to go then we won’t have a problem with pulling the book. We’re not interested in debating our decisions about this and yeah they’re merely subjective decisions made by us based upon our own intolerance to anything we perceive as racist, homophobic or misogynistic.

Most of us at Dostoyevsky Wannabe come from a Cultural Studies and Critical Theory background so suffice to say we, individually, have a great many feelings and thoughts about politics, policy, political correctness, identity and class politics and you’ll probably find out if you agree/disagree with those by what we say/post on social-media, should you be interested in such things but our individual opinions aren’t what either Dostoyevsky Wannabe or Swimmers Club are about. DW and Swimmers Club are first and foremost about fiction, design, art, music and popular culture.