Imogen Howsen’s main message was one of enthusiasm and encouragement.

After a short history of Samhain she went on to explain that while other US publishers are cutting down on print runs, for Samhain numbers are actually climbing. For example Kindle sales in April 2009 were approximately 16,000 and in April 2010 114,000.

As a result Samhain is happy to consider new manuscripts (12,000-120,000 words long) and new authors as well as re-releases. Three new editors have been taken on to deal with volume and there are also regular themed anthology calls. They publish a small amount of erotica, inspirational, contemporary, fantasy and gay romance and will consider anything except women’s fiction with low key romance, sagas or, at the moment, young adult. The romance must be centre stage and have a happy ending and can be written in the first or third person.

Samhain has an author friendly query process. Although there is no formal system for feedback some editors do give some but only because they are kind. Don’t expect it. They try and respect the author’s writing voice during editing and they liaise with authors on cover art. There is a maximum 16 week response rate and although there are no advances royalty rates are quite generous.

After getting us all enthusiastic Immi went on to give us some guidelines on how to get to the top of the slush pile at Samhain. She talked about the importance of a good query email and advised prospective authors to include title, genre and length, some kind of tagline to summarise the book and a brief blurb also a small amount about yourself –so long as you have something relevant to say e.g. if you’re a member of the RNA. The synopsis and manuscript should be attached as separate rtf files.

She suggested that authors should check out the guidelines thoroughly before submitting and if there are questions it is best to check out the FAQs on the website before emailing the question to Samhain. The acceptance rate by Samhain is a total of 8% and that figure includes existing authors but don’t let that put you off.

Immi ended by saying that Samhain is ‘all about the story’ so please submit.
 
Written by Vasiliki Scurfield