Are you tired of querying into the void? Annoyed by the delays in placing your work? Or just eager for detailed and constructive face-to-face feedback from an actual publisher? We’re offering a luxury submission and critique process—a chance to avoid the void. (And possibly place your work.)

If you submit via this process, we will not only make a decision on your work within four weeks—we’ll also schedule a half-hour Zoom feedback session with one of our editors to discuss it in detail. If the work is not to our liking, we’ll let you know why it wasn’t a good fit, where we stopped reading, what we liked about your writing, and what you may want to do to improve it. If it is a good fit, we’ll determine what work needs to be done to sign a publication agreement—and once that’s in place and the book is on our release calendar, we’ll refund the submission fee.

Interested? Let’s GO!

"I had been sending out queries for my novel with no luck. I was not sure if I had a product, and I was not sure if I was selling it well, but I didn't know how to get those answers. When I saw Tortoise Books offered a submission critique service, I was happy to pay for that insight and feedback. What I did not expect was an offer to publish my book!" — Bristol Vaudrin, author of Afterward, coming in November of 2024