At last week’s Romantic Times Booklovers Convention in Orlando, Florida, Dorchester Publishing put together a panel that included Editor Leah Hultenschmidt, Marketing Director Erin Galloway and VP of Sales Diane Stacy to present information to writers.
Dorchester Publishing is an independent publishing firm that publishes 6 to 8 romance novels every month covering all sub-genres except erotic romance, young adult and inspirational. They also publish 4 westerns, 2 horror and 1 thriller every month. Manuscripts should be between 75,000 and 95,000 words.
Hultenschmidt wants to take chances on different, “quirky” projects that blend genres. For example, paranormal historical romances catch her interest. She wants to discover new voices. She went on to say that Dorchester debuted eleven new authors in 2009, and many of them came from contest entries that she judged—some of those entries weren’t even winners, but finalists.
Galloway agreed that new authors are welcome and that the company loves to grow an author’s career. Dorchester considers itself a family company and loves to adopt exciting new authors.
Dorchester has seen no negative impact from the economy and continues to acquire new titles. Their current needs are for historical romance (mainly set before 1900 but any location), paranormal romance (anything goes), time travel (they haven’t seen many of these lately and would love to look at some), romantic suspense, romantic mysteries, humorous contemporaries, and fantasy romance.
They accept unagented submissions, which should include a cover letter (showing sub-genre, word count, brief story information, writer’s credentials/affiliations) along with a story synopsis (5 pages max) and the first three chapters. All submissions should be in hardcopy, but they hope to start accepting electronic submissions sometime in the future. The response time on proposals is about 6 to 8 months. This is, of course, an estimate. For more information on submissions, please see the Dorchester website (below).
Books that are accepted for publication will usually hit the bookstores in 9 to 12 months. Ebook versions are released for each book but they are still catching up and hope to have simultaneous releases within the next year or so.
Dorchester Publishing: http://www.dorchesterpub.com
Leah Hultenschmidt’s blog: http://www.romanticreads.net
Dorchester on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dorchesterpub
Dorchester’s Hard Case Crime imprint: http://www.hardcasecrime.com
Northwest Houston RWA: http://www.nwhrwa.com
West Houston RWA: http://www.whrwa.com
Houston Bay Area RWA: http://www.hbarwa.com
Romance Writers of America: http://www.rwanational.org
Read about wonderful romance novelists at
http://www.examiner.com/x-5288-Salt-Lake-City-Romance-Novels-Examiner
http://www.examiner.com/x-2533-Romance-Novel-Examiner
http://www.examiner.com/x-4981-Romance-Novel-Examiner
Comments
Thanks so much for posting this info!
Oh yea! (Me, rubbing hands together in glee.) Thanks Teri, you've encapsulated what sounds like it must have been a terrific workship into a nutshell. I'm going to submit my current novel to this publisher. Thanks!
I had fun researching Dorchester when I started submitting to publishers last year. I bought a couple of their books as research of what they sold. Loved them!
Wow, Teri. Great job getting everything in there. Thank you!
Thanks for the info, Teri! And great blog! I'm definitely bookmarking it.
Faye
Got something to say?
Examiner.com is looking for writers, photographers, and videographers to join the fastest growing group of local insiders. If you are interested in growing your online rep apply to be an Examiner today!