Submission Guidelines

These are the manuscript submission guidelines for Ronald P. Frye & Company, a Canadian press publishing poetry, Canadian history, biography and memoir, and literary fiction. Following them makes it far more likely your work gets a careful reading, and it costs you nothing to submit — we do not charge a reading fee. If you have not already, start with what we publish and what we don’t. Keep a copy of these manuscript submission guidelines handy while you prepare your package.

Manuscript submission guidelines: a finished paperback printed after a submission is accepted by Ronald P. Frye and Company
Where a submission ends up: a finished paperback from our own presses.

Where to send your submission

Email everything to [email protected] with the subject line Submission — [Book Title], [Your Name]. Please send one email with your attachments rather than several in a row. We do not accept submissions by post, and we are not able to return paper manuscripts, so please do not mail us your only copy.

What to send

Poetry

  • The complete collection, not a sample. A full-length collection usually runs somewhere around 48 to 90 pages; shorter chapbook-length manuscripts are considered, but tell us that is what you are sending.
  • One poem per page, in the form you want it to appear on the page.
  • A note listing any poems that have appeared previously in journals, anthologies, or chapbooks, and where.

History, biography, memoir, and fiction

  • A synopsis of no more than 500 words describing the book and, for history and biography, the sources it rests on.
  • The first three chapters, or the first fifty pages, whichever ends more naturally. If we want to read on, we will ask for the full manuscript.
  • The approximate finished word count, and whether the manuscript is complete.
  • A note on any illustrations, maps, or photographs the book needs, and whether you hold the rights to them.

Your cover letter

Keep it to a page. Tell us what the book is and who it is for, say something about yourself and anything you have published before, and say why you think this book belongs with us in particular. A letter that shows you have looked at our catalogue always stands out.

File formats

  • Send PDF or DOCX attachments. We cannot reliably open Pages files, Scrivener projects, or links to cloud drives — please attach the files directly.
  • Keep the whole email under about 10 MB. If your manuscript is larger than that because of images, send the text first and tell us the images are coming.
  • Prose: double-spaced, 12 point, pages numbered, with your name and the book title in the header.

Simultaneous submissions

Yes, and we would rather you did than sat waiting on us. Send your manuscript wherever else you like. All we ask is that you write and tell us as soon as it is accepted somewhere else, so we can stop reading and give the time to someone else.

What happens next

Every submission is read by us, not by a screener, and we reply to all of them one way or the other. We are a small, family-run house and we read around the rest of the work of running a press, so this is not quick — we would rather give a manuscript a proper reading than a fast one. There is no need to send a second copy; if a good stretch of time has gone by, a short note asking where things stand is entirely welcome.

Two things we cannot do

  • We cannot return paper manuscripts or materials sent by post.
  • We cannot give detailed editorial feedback on work we decline. When we have something useful to say, we say it, but a decline is usually a decline without a critique attached.

If we say no

A decline from us means the book is not right for our list — often for reasons that have nothing to do with its quality, like what we already have coming out that season. Authors who want to publish the book themselves can hire us to do the work instead: see publishing services.