Ronald P. Frye & Company is a Canadian publisher accepting submissions — poetry, Canadian history, biography, memoir, and literary fiction. We have been publishing since 1979, starting as a scholarly press in politics, history, and philosophy, moving into secondary-school teaching materials through the 1990s, and adding poetry and fiction to the list around the turn of the millennium. We are still small and family-run, and we read what comes in ourselves rather than handing it to a screener.
What makes us unusual among Canadian publishers is that we both publish and print. Our own presses handle short and medium print runs cost-effectively, which keeps quality control in-house and means we are not waiting on an outside printer’s schedule. It also means we can take a chance on a book that a larger house would consider too small to be worth the trouble — which describes a good many of the books we are proudest of. We are a member of the wider Canadian publishing community described by the Association of Canadian Publishers, and we take the same care with a small history reprint that a national house takes with a lead title.
- What we publish
- What we don’t publish
- How it works
- How to send us your work
- If we are not the right home for your book
What we publish
- Poetry — single-author collections, and occasionally anthologies
- Canadian history, including regional and local history
- Biography and memoir, particularly where a life sits inside a larger Canadian story
- Literary fiction
- Scholarly and educational work in the humanities, in keeping with our origins as a scholarly press
What we don’t publish
- Children’s picture books and young adult fiction
- Genre fiction — romance, thriller, science fiction, fantasy, horror
- Cookbooks, self-help, and business books
- Screenplays and stage plays
- Individual poems, essays, or short stories on their own — we publish books, not a magazine
If your book sits outside these lists but you believe it genuinely belongs in our catalogue, write to us anyway and tell us why. We would rather read a good letter than miss a good book.
How it works
- Submit. Send your manuscript by email, following the submission guidelines. There is no reading fee.
- Editorial review. We read everything that arrives, and we read it ourselves rather than handing it to a screener. Because we are a small house, that takes time — we would rather give a manuscript a proper reading than a quick one. We write back either way.
- Offer and contract. If we want the book, we will make an offer and send a contract setting out rights, royalties, and a publication schedule, and we will talk it through with you before anything is signed.
- Publication. Editing, cover design, and typesetting, then printing on our own presses. Your book is listed in our online shop alongside the rest of the catalogue and offered to the libraries, educators, and historical societies we work with.
How to send us your work
We do not use an online submission portal. Email your submission to [email protected] with the subject line Submission — [Book Title], [Your Name], and follow the submission guidelines for what to include and in what format. A real person opens every one of these.
If we are not the right home for your book
We can only take on a small number of titles, and turning down a manuscript is not the same as thinking little of it. Authors who would rather publish a book themselves can hire us to do the work — editing, design, typesetting, ISBN registration, and printing. See publishing services for what that involves.
We hear from writers across the country, and from a few beyond it, and we read every letter ourselves. If you have been looking for a Canadian publisher accepting submissions who will actually read your manuscript rather than pass it to a form-letter algorithm, we would like to hear from you.