Skip to Content

An Important Announcement
We are excited to announce the long-awaited Duotrope community! Create your profile, high five your fellow creators, and journey along Rejection Road.

Editor Interview: Black Beacon Books

Describe what you publish in 25 characters or less.

Dark and quirky fiction

What other current publications (or publishers) do you admire most?

Midnight Echo
Dark Prints Press
Brimstone Press
Morpheus Tales
Cohesion Press
eMergent Publishing

If you publish writing, who are your favorite writers? If you publish art, who are your favorite artists?

Roald Dahl
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Edgar Allan Poe
Ruth Rendell
Christopher Fowler
Agatha Christie
Sheridan Le Fanu
Guy de Maupassant

What sets your publication apart from others that publish similar material?

Top-quality editing and book design.
Excellent stories written by talented and quirky authors.
A focus on short fiction anthologies.

What is the best advice you can give people who are considering submitting work to your publication?

It's pretty simple: read the submission guidelines carefully and edit your work thoroughly before submitting.

Describe the ideal submission.

1. A story that makes me gasp or sends a shiver through me. 2. A submission that has no spelling, punctuation, or grammatical errors. 3. A work of fiction that keeps me thinking long after I've finished reading it.

What do submitters most often get wrong about your submissions process?

They send stories that don't meet the guidelines in terms of genre or theme.

How much do you want to know about the person submitting to you?

Ideally, I like to have a link to a website / blog or social media page that includes information about previous publications and demonstrates an ability and desire to help us market our publications.

If you publish writing, how much of a piece do you read before making the decision to reject it?

If the first page doesn't draw me in, I'll skim through the story and give the last page a good read. If the ending doesn't make up for the rest of the story, then I'll reject it without a second thought.

What additional evaluations, if any, does a piece go through before it is accepted?

There are no other specific evaluations. If I like the story and it meets my needs, I'll accept it. However, acceptance is just the beginning. I'm an exigent editor and I want every story I publish to be the best it can be. I expect contributors to be willing to work with me on rewriting a story where necessary. At the same time, I do my best to ensure the writer has the final say on his or her work.

What is a day in the life of an editor like for you?

I'm not a full-time editor and only dream of being able to make a living out of publishing fiction. Black Beacon Books is an indie publishing project and will probably always be a financial black hole. The submission reading process (at the moment) is very simple. When I receive a sub, I reply to the writer with a note of thanks and an idea of the time I expect it will take for me to get back. When I have time, I read the submission. The decision to accept or reject usually happens very quickly, but if I'm not sure about a story, I'll leave it for a day or two and then reread it before making a decision.

Cookie Consent: This site uses secure first-party cookies for essential, preference-setting, and statistical purposes. We do not use any marketing, advertising, or third-party cookies. Read our full cookie policy.