Submission Guidelines

Please read these guidelines thoroughly before you submit any work to Freya's Bower.

Freya's Bower is a non-subsidy publishing house. We are not a vanity press or self-publishing site. We pay royalties of 40% on electronic formats and 10% of the wholesale print price. There is no charge to authors.

We publish erotica and romance. New writers as well as cross-genre experimental styles and short story collections are welcome. If you are interested in submitting mainstream fiction, please visit our sister company Wild Child Publishing.

What we want:

1. Plot driven romances and/or erotica with happy, or at the very least hopeful, endings and varying degrees of sex, depending on the classification of the story. (Sweet, Tangy, Spicy, Sizzling, or Beyond Sizzling)
2. Heroes and heroines we can relate to. We want to see an arc of development in the characters throughout the story. Shorter stories must be tightly crafted for this reason.
3. Sex scenes must be relevant to the plot and organic to the story. If a scene can work without sex, then the sex isn't necessary and best left out.
4. Light bondage. This is acceptable as long as all parties are willing.
5. Titillating, passionate, well-written gay, lesbian and heterosexual stories.
6. We prefer third person stories.

We do not accept:

1. Pornography (The difference between porn and erotica.)
2. Works promoting hatred of any kind (racial, sexism, or homophobia included)
3. Violence not pertinent to the story line.
4. Excessive profanity. We understand that some types of erotica require a certain amount of profanity. However, we do not want every thought, dialogue scene, or descriptive scene overloaded with it. We are looking for classy erotica, not porn.
5. Yellow showers or defecation. That is not erotic.
6. No beastiality, not including with shapeshifters in their human form.
7. No rape for the sake of shock value. Remember, we are interested in sex between two consenting adults.
8. No sex involving minors.
9. No necrophilia.
10. Manuscripts littered with poor grammar, misspellings, and excessive typos. Do not rely on your computer's spell/grammar check. It does make mistakes.
11. For us to accept a first person story, it has to be spectacular. We prefer third person stories.
12. Although cunt is used in erotic fiction, we at Freya's Bower don't like the word because it's one of the most derogatory words for female genitalia (and more porn than erotica). Try not to use it much, but if you do, be sure it's used in an appropriate fashion.

How to submit:

1. The first step is to send a query letter with a 1-2 paragraph synopsis of your work and the first chapter of the manuscript in the body of the email. If we like the synopsis and first chapter, we will request a 'partial'. This is the first three chapters, or approximately 50 pages, of your book. If you send us a partial before we request it, it will be rejected and returned. You obviously haven't read our submission guidelines.
2. The work must be completed in its entirety. We do not take proposals for books that have yet to be written.
3. No simultaneous submissions. We will do our best to respond within 6-8 weeks. If we are reading work submitted elsewhere that another publisher has already accepted, you have just wasted our time.
4. Our standards are high. We expect submissions to be of a professional quality. Anything you submit must be edited and polished. Submissions with numerous grammatical and spellings errors will be rejected on the spot. If you do not take the time to catch such errors, you are not serious about writing professionally. If you are uncertain about grammar, consult one of the many online websites (see our reference page) or invest in a good reference book. A good dictionary can be your best friend when it comes to spelling and is a vital tool for any serious author. Do not rely only on your word processor's spell check and grammar program.
5. All works must be in English at this time.
6. You will be notified of our decision in 6-8 weeks, time allowing.

Formatting

1. Double-space your manuscript. Include a header with the title of the book, your name and numbered pages. Indent each new paragraph .5 inches. Start each chapter on a new page. If there is a scene break within a chapter, indicate it with a centered ***.
2. All first submissions must include:
   1. your full name, a pseudonym if used,
   2. a query letter,
   3. a brief synopsis, subject or genre,
   4. the first chapter,
   5. and be in the body of the email
   6. 'Submission' must be in the subject line,
   7. Mail submission to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .
3. Should we request a partial, attach an RTF or text file to the email. We will not accept pdf, html, Word, WordPerfect, or any other files besides the two listed above. Include all 50 pages/3 chapters in one file. Name the file an abbreviated title of your book. So, if your novel is titled The Long Journey Home, your file name would be something like ljhome.rtf or ljhome.txt. Include your full name, address, title of manuscript, and length in the file.

Word counts:

Chapter Books: 5,000-6,000 words

Bites: 6,000-8,000 words

Short stories: 10,000-15,000 words

Novellas: 15,001-30,000 words

Category: 30,001-45,000 words

Novels: 45,001-70,000

Plus Novels: 70,001-100,000 words

Humongous Novels: 100,000 or more words

What are Chapter Books?

Chapter Books are a series of three, or more, installments of an ongoing story. Each "chapter" must be 5000-6000 words in length. They will be released monthly. The story can be any heat rating, any genre, and can even incorporate any of our series (Goddess Freya, Valkyrie, T.R.O.U.B.L.E.) Due to the length, they will not be given ISBN's and will have one cover for all installments with the exception of a minor change to distinguish each installment from the others. (i.e. Title one: The Southern Sting: Chapter One, title two: The Southern Sting: Chapter Two, and so on.)

To submit, include the first chapter in the body of the email text with "Chapter Books" in the subject line. Also include a one-paragraph synopsis of the following installments planned for the story.

What are Bites? -- We are not accepting Bites submissions at this time

These are collections of two short, short stories with an underlying theme running through both stories. Whether that theme is the same protagonist name for both stories, two vampire stories, two stories set in the Old West, two... You get the picture. The only difference is their length. Both stories combined can be no shorter than 6,000 and no longer than 8,000. So, if one story is 2,500 words, the second must be 3,500 words or more, but cannot exceed 5,500 words. All the same submission guidelines apply, except: do NOT query. Just send us the first story with a brief synopsis of the second one.

Series

Freya's Bower is open year round for submissions of stories for the following lines:

• Goddess Freya series
  This series features Freya in the story line. Her presence in the book, regardless of story length, must be an essential aspect of the plot, but Freya is not the heroine. Freya must appear as true to the tales in Norse mythology as possible with some extrapolation allowed, but nothing too far out of character.
• Valkyrie series.
  In this series, the heroine, or hero, is a Valkyrie. The story can be set in any historical era, on any planet and in any dimension, be of any genre or subgenre and not limited to M/F sexual relations. The Valkyrie can also be of any race, human, shapeshifter or alien life form. Although traditionally, Valkyries have been female and Nordic, we prefer not to limit our series to these restrictions. For instance, the Valkyrie could be posing as a cop in modern day sent to protect a particular person or to collect a soul soon to fall in "battle" — or as we know it, in the line of duty. However, we do expect the stories that include Norse mythology and/or are historical to have been researched thoroughly, and that both the history and/or the mythology should be accurate. Some dramatic license is allowed, but if the story is set in Ancient Rome, you wouldn't find the characters saying, "Hey, dude, how's it chillin'?" Nor would the characters be wearing go-go pants and thigh high boots, unless its a time traveling Valkyrie.
• T.R.O.U.B.L.E. series.
  She's gorgeous and causes chaos wherever she goes. Perhaps she's a klutz, a walking disaster. Maybe she has the worst luck imaginable. For males: He's dangerous. The bad boy you can't help but love. Maybe he's a chick magnet, or maybe he's the guy flipping burgers at the local diner. Catastrophe and mayhem seem to follow him around. Protagonists can also be Valkyries, werewolves, vampires, and shapeshifters that have trouble follow them wherever they go. All races and sexual orientations are encouraged.

We are both an online publisher and print publisher. However, all communications will be made via email.

All works submitted must be your original creation, free of all legal constraints. In other words, you must own all copyright and publishing rights to your book. You cannot have a contract with another publisher on submitted work. If the work has been previously published, we will only accept it if the rights have reverted to you.

All books accepted for publishing by Freya's Bower will be subject to editing. If you are not open to suggestions and/or recommendations, do not submit. However, we will keep British quotes and spelling provided it is consistent throughout the work.