Submissions

Well, we were so flooded by submission requests in 2006 that we had to close them down. While we love books and love reading, we're a small company and simply couldn't handle the volume. Notice the past tense in the preceding sentences. That's right, we're opening up our submissions again.

To guarantee a response, please follow our submission guidelines exactly. Any deviation may cause us to toss your work without even giving it a fair shake. Do you want that? Neither do we.

So, in the plainest English we can muster, here are our requests:

1. Please send a query letter only. Do not send any sample pages. An author bio, either contained in the query letter or on a separate sheet, works for us.
2. Do not send us books printed by PublishAmerica, iUniverse, Xlibris, or anybody else as a sample of your work. In 99.9% of the cases, it will work against you. That also means: don't include those books in your query letter or list of credits, either.
3. Do not make grand claims about your "guaranteed best-seller" or "my book is the next [insert name of hugely popular book]." It's very difficult to read letters like that without giggling uncontrollably. While we're a comedy-based firm, you want us laughing with you, not at you.
4. Ask yourself: "If my book was going to be turned into a movie, would it be produced by a major studio as a hugely promoted summer star vehicle." If the answer is "yes," your book problem isn't for us. We don't do silly. We aren't interested in slapstick, overly complicated setpieces, zany characters. It's been done, and usually not well. Broad, goofy comedy isn't our niche.
5. Speaking of our niche, ours is pretty tight. We focus primarily on hard-edged, toothy satire. Sometimes these are satires of other literary genres/styles (like Donovan Baker's Sweet Girls series); more often, they simply satirize the conventions of modern drama and literature without specifically parodying anything. These books are about the human condition, problems with society and the world, but they're tackled in the funniest imaginable ways.
6. Please, for the love of all that's good in the world, do NOT send us first drafts! Don't send us queries about books that are "almost done." If either state describes your book, it's not ready no matter what friends and family have told you. Sorry.
7. No colored paper/ink. White paper. Black ink. That's the standard. We like the standard.
8. Write your book. Write something that means something. Our entire mission statement revolves around using humor to explore the meaning of life. We don't like disposable things.

Provided you've carefully read all of those guidelines (and have followed them!), please send your query to:

Idle Valley Press
Submissions
1903 N. 12^th Street
Suite 1150
Lafayette, IN 47904

Once your query has been submitted, please be patient. We'll try to get back to you in a matter of weeks. Sometimes it takes months. Under NO circumstances should you call to check in on the status of a query submission.

All of the big, bad talk out of the way, we also want to remind you that we're in this business because we love words and you probably are, too. Even if you aren't right for us, please stick with writing and improving your craft. We respect the hell out of you for it.

Thanks,

The Editorial Staff of Idle Valley Press