Hello and welcome to our submissions page. Thank you for your interest in submitting your book for consideration.
UPDATED JUNE 2018
No submissions being accepted at this time. Please bookmark this page and check again later in the year.
The publishing industry changed dramatically since the creation of Kindle Ebooks and many of the publishers you grew up with no longer exist as a result. Payments to writers have also fallen through the floor thanks to easy access to writers in countries where US$1.00 can feed a family for a week.
As a result, new publishers, such as Maldek House, have arisen which operate completely differently to the old style publishing houses. No longer a literary haven, publishers are more about churning out novels at high speed. Many competitors in the ebook market publish 10 to 20 novels PER DAY. Many don’t even use ISBNs.
This is the market we aim to be in. Currently we are publishing about one book per week, which is nowhere near the amount these days to generate a high enough revenue for the publishing company to be profitable. (Maldek House is currently run by a staff of volunteers, and any money made usually goes to paying bills.)
What’s that got to do with you?
Well, glad you asked! We’d like to get up to 10 novels published on Kindle per day. To do that, we need writers like you to send us your manuscripts for consideration. We’re currently looking for science fiction, fantasy or speculative fiction stories of about 60,000+ words each. If you’ve written a lot of novels, and have already submitted them to a few publishing companies without success, then moved on to something else, why not try us?
We’ll pay US$100.00 by Paypal (Paypal may charge you a processing fee) for any novels accepted by our team on the day of publication on Kindle.
While we’re open to considering many types of novels, we’re more likely to consider ones that contain most of the following:
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- Main character discovers an interesting, futuristic issue and solves it using science (or convincing pseudoscience or extrapolated science based on current science) So, no battle-oriented stories. Think intellectual Doctor Who stories where the character uses his/her mind to solve a problem, but with perhaps a bit more science based in fact.
- Always set in the future, at least 100 years hence. Happier with 1000 years hence. Let’s avoid 20th/21st century baggage and just tell an original story.
- Always some kind of non-humanoid aliens present, usually friendly.
- Stories featuring no humans are even better! The more alien the world is that you set your story in, the more excited we’ll get. (If you’re not sure of how to come up with an alien character, just make sure they’ve got tentacles somewhere.)
- Always end on a positive note (even if you destroy the entire human race it’ll still be positive for someone!)
- PG 13. No sex, swearing or obvious LGBT themes, unless the entire story will fall apart without it.
- All stories must be original. No using copyright characters or established series. No rewriting someone else’s work. I have to use copyscape, and I’ve been reading SF since the 70s, so I’ll probably recognise a rewrite even if you don’t know you’ve done one!
- Common SF terms. Make up some new ones! For example, please avoid using ‘stargate’ (Stargate) or warp drive (Star Trek), or time vortex (Doctor Who), or ‘the force’ (Star Wars) ‘AI’ and ‘hyperspace’ are okay as they’re common terms throughout all SF.
- Please avoid pop culture references. It is unlikely characters years in the future would know anything about the present. Readers love to become immersed in a story and feel like they are there, watching things unfold. Pop culture references that wouldn’t fit the reality throw them out of their immersion. They also age the story. Best avoided unless the story is set in 2018.
- Dialogue between characters that move the story forward.
- Set the story in the ‘now’. Avoid prologues and epilogues and long expositions about the histories of characters and planets.
So, if you have a novel that’s been gathering dust and you want to make a bit of money on it, send it to us. We’ll retain first print rights, and full rights to use it as an ebook and print on demand book on various platforms for 24 months. After that, the rights return to you.
Send your manuscript as a .doc file (not docx) to submissions@maldekhouse.com
Many thanks. Looking forward to hearing from you.
The Maldek House team