A Slice of Cherry Pie, edited by Ivy Alvarez. From the HE/HF archives.
Bloof will open the month of June for manuscript submissions of poetry chapbooks. All manuscripts must adhere to the requirements below, and be submitted electronically between June 1 and June 30, 2012.
This is not a contest. There are no fees, no judges, no bullshit. Manuscripts will not be read blind. This is an open reading period.
We will choose at least ONE but as many as SIX chapbooks to publish between Fall 2012 and Fall 2013.
If your chapbook is chosen, you will hear from us via email. If not, you will be notified of the selections when we make the public announcement, on or around September 1.
Books will be done in a limited handmade run of 100 copies, then released electronically thereafter.
Guidelines
1. Read a couple of our books, or at least Google the poets and read some of their work. While we are theoretically open to reading any style of poetry, we certainly have preferences and even biases. Familiarity with the books we have already published* should help you decide whether your work is a good fit. That's different than saying we are only looking for work that looks just like what we have already done. (As if!)
2. Bloof is a collective press. What does that mean? Read this post about "The Way We Work." Basically it means if you publish with us, you become part of the collective and will be expected to actively participate in the press, including activities and events beyond the scope of your own book. Do not submit to Bloof if you don't think that sounds like a whole lot of fun. That post also explains how you will be paid, if you publish with Bloof.
3. Manuscripts should be typed, in English, consist of up to 30 pages of poetry, and be formatted in a sane, easy-to-read manner. The work should be unpublished in chapbook or book form, as a whole, though individual poems may have appeared in magazines, etc.
4. Collaborations and translations are acceptable, with the participation of all collaborators. If you are submitting translations, you must include written permission from the original poet (or copyright holder).
5. Include a cover sheet with name, manuscript title, mailing address, and email address. It is unnecessary to include this information anywhere else, like page headers or footers.
6. Number the pages in the manuscript.
7. Cover letters are OK (we are not reading blind), but we'd actually prefer to see a Chapbook Proposal. How do you imagine this chapbook will look? Do you have any design or artistic skills (or an artist collaborator) you'd like to incorporate? Would you enjoy helping with the assembly? Are you interested in particular binding styles or materials? The final design will be a collaboration between Bloof and the author--and obviously we are constrained by budget considerations--but for the proposal, if you have a vision, describe it to us. Maybe we can make it work. (UPDATE: To clarify, it is optional for you to bring your own design or illustrative skills into play here. If that's something you'd like to do, explain. If you have any other ideas about the book, beyond these few examples---like, you want to create a downloadable soundtrack or send each purchaser a custom tea mix or guerrilla-distribute your author copies in significant public places or whatever--explain those. In other words, you can submit just a manuscript...or a manuscript plus these sorts of ideas in a concept/proposal.)
8. Manuscripts must be saved as a PDF and submitted electronically to the email address in the sidebar. Save the file with your last name and title (or partial title if it is long) as the document name, separated by an underscore. For example: Knox_Mystery.pdf
9. Simultaneous submissions are your right. We ask only that you promptly let us know if your manuscript is accepted elsewhere.
10. Any submissions that do not follow these guidelines will be automatically deleted. It’s fine to ask a question (same email address) if something is unclear, but if we can tell you haven’t read what we’ve taken the time to write here, we probably won’t answer. We’re very busy...and about to get a whole lot busier.
*(Since our list is still rather small, also have a look at that HEHF archive on the store page, to check out some of our older chapbook and broadside projects. You might also consider some of the books Shanna edited for Soft Skull Press, before leaving to found Bloof: Danielle Pafunda's Pretty Young Thing, Maggie Nelson's Jane, CAConrad's Deviant Propulsion, Daniel Nester's God Save My Queen, Wanda Phipps' Wake Up Calls, Ronald Palmer's Logicalogics, etc.)
