Book Submissions
Pool Party is open for book submissions!!! We will have two reading periods and publish two books/year. The first reading period runs from now until December 15th, 2025. Please read the below information, then send your gripping manuscript to [email protected]
Looking for our lit mag or reading series submissions page? Click here.
What We’re Looking For
Like our magazine, we are genre-agnostic, open to (and encouraging of) cross-genre hybrids and experimental forms. Most important to us is that even the most hilarious work interrogates something. For a sense of our aesthetic, take a look at a non-exhaustive list of some recent reads we love and would have loved to publish:
Girl on Girl, by Emily Costa
The Book of X, by Sara Rose Etter
Our There in the Dark, by Katherine Coldiron
Pathemata, by Maggie Nelson
Bad Foundations, by Brian Allen Carr
I’m a Fan, by Sheena Patel
Guidelines
Please send all manuscript submissions to [email protected] with a subject line that follows this format: [genre i.e. Novel, Memoir, Poetry Collection, Hybrid, etc.] Submission [date]. In other words, Novel Submission 2.14.2025. Please confirm your submission has met the below requirements before sending.
- Please submit only completed manuscripts—no samples, excerpts, or proposals.
- Simultaneous submissions are totally fine, but please withdraw if you get accepted elsewhere (if so, congrats!).
- Submissions should be submitted as a Word Doc/Pages email attachment–i.e., not a Google Drive link and not a PDF.
- Submissions must be: double-spaced, include word count, title, page numbers, and should include your name, address, email, phone number. Add title and your name to a header which populates on every page.
- Before sending the email with your attached submission, please include a cover letter so we know who you are. Be sure to include a short bio.
- Do not submit anything that is in any way generated by A.I. That includes running work through Chat GPT to assess readability, to “make it better,” or for any other reason. Although we know that writers and artists are doing interesting work that is in dialogue with A.I., we choose not to contribute to the ecologically disastrous impacts caused by utilizing this technology. We also feel strongly against publishing work containing crowdsourced language and phrases created by A.I. tools that have been ‘trained’ by subsuming existing authors’ and artists’ work without consent, credit, or compensation.
The Editors
Ryan-Ashley (Anderson) Maloney – Managing Editor, Creative Director
Kevin Maloney – Assistant Editor
Our Commitment to Financial Transparency
At Pool Party, we believe in full economic transparency for our authors. Too often, small/micro presses operate in the shadows. Author payments are infrequent and confusing. We aim to do the opposite. In addition to paying author royalties on a regular schedule, we will also provide a complete breakdown of the costs involved in producing and distributing our books, so our authors understand exactly how we calculate their royalty payment. We feel this is the bare minimum publishers owe their authors for entrusting them with their words.
Questions? Email [email protected]
