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Submission Guidelines

Please Send Submission Package to:
submissions at carnaldesirespublishing dot com

General Information:

We welcome submissions from new, unpublished authors as well as from those well known to the public. We also welcome authors who do not enjoy the services of an agent.

We do, however, urge all of those who plan to submit a work, to study our guidelines, especially those detailing how we wish the manuscript formatted. Whether or not we accept your submission will depend on strict adherence to the guidelines, as well as on the quality of the story itself.

We will accept previously published works only if the author exclusively holds the rights.

We will not accept short stories (stories shorter than 20,000 words), or a collection of short stories presented as a single submission.

We will not accept simultaneous submissions! Please state in the email to which you attach your submission that your manuscript has been sent EXCLUSIVELY to Carnal Desires Publishing, and will not be sent to any other publisher for a period of at least thirty days (our current response time).

We are a new publishing house. Our response time is currently thirty days, except for abnormally long novels. We plan to respond within sixty days at the maximum. We will reply promptly to emails from authors who wish clarification of any portion of our guidelines.

LENGTH OF MANUSCRIPT: The minimum length is 20,000 words. We consider a manuscript that is 20,000 words to 30,000 words long to be a novella, and we charge less for these shorter works than we do for novels 30,000 words or more long. We have a maximum length of 80,000 words. If your novel is longer, we advise you to split it into two shorter novels forming a two-book series.

SERIES OF NOVELS. If an author has completed a series of related works, and we accept the first book, we will also accept the other novels in the series, unless we discover the quality of those to be markedly inferior to that of the first book. Each book in the series should stand alone (have a definite conclusion: a happy ending).

WHAT WE WANT/WILL CONSIDER IN A SUBMISSION:

  1. We wish to receive the entire manuscript of a work: one that not only is completely finished, but also lovingly, painstakingly edited and polished, and placed in the format we require. (See the section on formatting.) We will not accept submissions that require exhaustive editing!
  2. Eroticism. Explicit sensual scenes form a requirement for acceptance. We will not accept conventional “vanilla” romance. We want highly erotic romance. But no matter how sexually explicit the story is, it must basically be a romance, which means it must be a love story with a happy ending.
  3. Cross-genre erotic romances will be welcomed. Those we define as love stories that combine erotica with significant elements of another genre, such as action/adventure, fantasy, historical, mystery/suspense, paranormal, science fiction, vampire, or westerns. To be accepted, the work must be one in which the erotic/romantic elements predominate.
  4. Believable, likeable, well-developed characters. Make the personalities of your main protagonists appealing! Their bodies don't have to be beautiful, but they must have attractive personas.
  5. A riveting plot. We want those fascinating characters to be caught up in an intense, dramatic, suspenseful conflict: one charged with sexual tension. We want to see an action-packed beginning that immediately draws us into the unfolding drama. We want the suspense to build toward a thunderous climax (no pun intended!), in which the problems facing the protagonists get resolved, the machinations of the villains, if any, get foiled, the lovers achieve far deeper understanding of both themselves and each other, and all ends happily. We want stories that are upbeat and life-affirming, even if ultra-erotic.
  6. Non-teen-aged protagonists. We prefer that the protagonists not be callow teenagers just turned eighteen, but rather lovers who are at least somewhat older: lovers whose personalities and sexual prowess grew, as those men and women gained a varied experience of life, passion and love. (We refer here to human lovers, of course. Authors of cross-genre works such as science fiction/erotica need not feel constricted by this preference.) We welcome novels featuring passionate, sexy, virile protagonists who are middle-aged, or even quite mature.
  7. Originality. We want stories that stand apart from those of established, successful authors. We want stories written by people possessed of a vivid imagination, an ability to write memorable prose, a talent for creating lively, natural-sounding dialogue, and a determination to avoid long, dull, descriptive, repetitive passages that impede the flow of the narrative. We want novels written by authors who positively revel in portraying sensual scenes, and who possess a flair for dreaming up unique, sexually charged conflicts. We don't want trite, labored, obviously imitative efforts to produce a work of erotica, simply out of a belief that erotica sells well. Inspired erotica sells well!

WHAT WE ABSOLUTELY DO NOT WANT TO SEE IN A SUBMISSION:

  1. Pornography, which we define as writing comprised of a pointless succession of graphic portrayals of steamy sex intended solely to initiate arousal. We want writing possessing literary merit. We want well-constructed narratives that engage the minds and the hearts of our readers!
  2. Pedophilia (sexual intercourse between adults and minor children).
  3. Bestiality (sexual intercourse with animals). Animals native to Earth, that is. This rule may be waived in the case of certain characters created by authors of fantasy or science fiction.
  4. Depictions of excretory functions, or the misuse of the products of those functions.
  5. Necrophilia (sexual intercourse with dead bodies).
  6. Descriptions of, or even mention of, the insertion of sharp objects such as knives or swords into bodily orifices, or any other injurious insertions.
  7. Stories that portray murder as a sexual turn-on, or which justify and/or contain lurid descriptions of the commission of the crimes of rape or incest, or which convey that those crimes constitute acceptable behavior on the part of characters presented as good, as opposed to evil villains. And don't describe in lurid detail what the evil villains do in that regard!
  8. Stories that include material intended to degrade or vilify any particular human social group.

FORMATS: We are currently publishing eBooks in Rocket-eBook, Hiebook, Adobe PDF, MS-Reader, Mobipocket, iSilo, Franklin eBookMan, Palm Doc, Kindle, Html, and the new SONY format. Carnal Desires Publishing will continue to evolve as new technologies emerge in the area of the electronic book.

COVER ART: Carnal Desires Publishing will provide intriguing, highly artistic cover art. The image created for a particular book will appear both in the eBook file of the work, and on the print version, if the author elects to offer a print version. We do not accept cover art provided by the author. The artistry of our cover artist forms an eye-catching signature attribute distinguishing all novels sold by us.

CONTRACT TERMS:

  1. A full contract will be supplied to the author for review upon our acceptance of the work.
  2. Royalties: 35 % of the cover price less credit card processing fees for eBooks sold from our site, 35 % of the amount received from a reseller, and 10 % of the retail price for POD print books.
  3. Rights: we will acquire only the digital rights (exclusive electronic rights for eBook and audio use) for five years, with an automatic one-year renewal unless either party provides a written request after the five year term, but before the anniversary of each one year renewal date. If the author takes the Print-On-Demand option, we will also acquire the paperback rights for five years.
  4. Royalty payments that total more than $25.00 will be paid semi-annually, in US dollars. Payments will be made approximately two months after the end of the semi-annual period. The length of this delay will depend on the amount of time our retailers take to distribute payments to us.
  5. Our preferred method of payment is to deposit the royalty payment in an author-supplied PayPal Account.
  6. Authors who prefer not to use PayPal can request that they be mailed a check in USD funds. Such a check will be drawn on a Canadian bank, and mailed from Canada, so authors residing in the USA should realize that considerable time may elapse before such a check arrives, and then clears through a USA bank.

HOW TO ARRANGE, FORMAT AND SEND YOUR SUBMISSION:

• Manuscripts must be submitted electronically, in .rtf format created in MS WORD (Word 98 or above), and be sent as an attachment.

• We will NOT accept manuscripts sent in MS Word's DOC format, or those contained within the body of an email. Documents in DOC format can carry harmful viruses. We will NOT accept manuscripts in HTML, Mac, WordPerfect, or MS Works.

• If an author lacks access to a PC, we will accept a submission comprised of a file created on a Mac, but the document thus created MUST BE SAVED AND SUBMITTED TO CDP IN .RTF FORMAT.

• The email must contain “Submission to DDP of [title of book] by [your real name]” in the subject line.

• Include a short, one-paragraph note in the body of the email, so as to introduce yourself, if you are submitting to DDP for the first time.

• The submission must be a single .rtf file separated into two parts by a Next Page break. For details, see our Formatting Guidelines.

• Manuscripts must be placed in the format we require. See our Formatting Guidelines.

FORMATTING GUIDELINES:

The single .rtf file constituting the submission must be separated into two portions, Part A and Part B, by a Next Page break. To insert a Next Page break, click on Insert in the main MS Word toolbar, and then on Break. Under “Section Break Types,” you will find “Next Page.” Click on that. Or press the CTRL-ENTER keys.

Part A must contain the following items in the order given below. Insert the numbering and the headings given in bold type. Follow those with the required information. Single space the paragraphs providing this information.

  1. Submission of [name of book] by [your real name]
  2. Contact Information , each item placed on a separate line
    1. Author's real name
    2. Author's pseudonym, if you wish the work to appear under a pen name
    3. Author's mailing address, including your country
    4. Author's telephone number
    5. Author's email address
  3. Synopsis: a short description of the story: three paragraphs that total approximately 250 words. Note that the short and long synopsis is used to whet the potential reader's appetite and should tempt them but not give away any plot points that would ruin the experience for them.
  4. Short Synopsis: a very concise description of the book: one that totals no more than 175 words.
  5. Long Synopsis: a more detailed description of the book. Five or six paragraphs totaling 400 to 450 words.
  6. Biography: a biography of you, the author, using your pen name, if you have one. The biography should be two or three paragraphs totaling approximately 250 words. Since the public will see this biography, write it with that fact in mind, in the third person.
  7. Photograph: a digital photograph, if you have one available, and wish it displayed to the public.
  8. Series: state whether or not your submission forms part of a series. If it does, state whether or not the other books in the series are also finished and polished. State the name of the series and the number of books the series contains.
  9. Genre: state what genre and subgenre best describe your story.
  10. Publishing History: state whether the submission has been previously published. If it has, then it is essential that all rights have reverted back exclusively to you.
  11. Editing: state whether the manuscript has been edited by a professional editor. Whether it has or not, your book, if accepted, will still be edited by us, with a view to correcting any errors in grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, and spelling that have escaped detection by you and/or your editor.
  12. A Final, Important Note: acceptance of your submission will depend, to a marked degree, on your having few errors in grammar, sentence structure, punctuation and spelling, both in the manuscript and in the synopses/biography that you include in Part A. Manuscripts needing exhaustive editing will be rejected, after we read them only so far as to enable us to make that determination.

The synopses and biography will be used to help sell your book, so make those as well-crafted as the narrative they describe!

Part B. Copy and paste your complete, proofread, carefully edited, properly formatted manuscript into this part of the single document.

FORMATTING THE MANUSCRIPT : we require that your manuscript be formatted as follows:

To insert certain required formatting values into your manuscript, click on Format in the main MS Word toolbar, and then click on Font. When you finish with Font, click on Paragraph. Enter in each the values indicated in A and B, below:

A. Format, Font: Times New Roman, regular, 12 point.

B. Format, Paragraph, Indents and Spacing, General: Alignment = left, Outline Level = body text. Indentation: Left = 0, Right = 0. Special = First line, By = .5. Spacing: Before = 0 pt. After = 0 pt. Line Spacing = single.

  1. Do not put blank lines between the paragraphs of text.
  2. Do not use headers or footers, and do not number the pages.
  3. Use one-inch margins.
  4. Leave two spaces between sentences.
  5. Thoughts expressed by a character, as opposed to spoken words, must be italicized rather than placed within quotation marks. Foreign words or phrases, and words that the author wishes to emphasize, must also be italicized. Do not use underlining for this purpose.
  6. Do not press the Tab key at the beginning of each paragraph! Doing so will double the degree of indentation. If you habitually do that, and are now putting a completed manuscript into the format we require, please remove all the Tab arrows at the beginning of each paragraph. To render those Tab arrows visible, click on the Show/Hide icon in the Standard MS Word toolbar. (You can use Find and Replace to remove the Tab marks. Click on Find, More, Special, Tab Character. Click on replace. Leave Replace blank. Click on Replace All. The Tab arrows will all vanish.)
  7. We strongly recommend that you get into the habit of activating the Show/Hide icon on the Standard MS Word Toolbar as you write, so as to see not only the arrows made by the Tab key, but also the dots representing spaces and the symbols representing paragraph marks.
  8. Try not to leave two spaces at the end of the last sentence of a paragraph. Those wrap around. In some formats used by publishers, those wrapped-around spaces can cause trouble. We urge you to perform the tedious task of removing those, if they abound in your manuscript, before sending it to us.

First Page of the Manuscript:

  1. In the upper right hand corner, place the following, each on its own line:

Your real name

Pen name you wish used

Word count

Your mailing address

Your telephone number

Your email address

  1. Place the cursor on the line that says “Delete the instructions given below.” Read and then delete the instructions. Insert the properly formatted, single-spaced manuscript.
  2. Separate chapters with a Page Break. To insert a Page Break, click on Insert , in the main MS Word toolbar, and then on Break, and then on “Page Break.” Do not leave blank space above the chapter heading.

We require this kind of formatting because it makes submissions easy for us to read, and easy to set up for publishing. Because we save time by setting this requirement, you can be assured that a book we accept will be offered for sale that much sooner!

To download a MS Word Submissions Template into which you can copy and paste your personal information, synopses, and manuscript, click HERE.

If you have questions regarding any aspect of the formatting described above, email us at: submissions at carnaldesirespublishing dot com We welcome questions, and will send swift replies.