Editor Interview: Chapeltown Books Feisty Women Series

Feisty women's stories

We are great fans of Mslexia. This imprint is about women writing about and for women. For Mslexia readers in fact.

Maeve Binchy, Joanne Harris, Mary Hoffman,

We accpet both fiction and non-fiction for this call. Different from other publishers is the focus on women who achieve a lot often in diffiuclt settings.

Take a look at our other feisty women books. Really convince us about the women you're featuring. For nonfiction we prefer memoir to biography.

The ideal submission has followed the guidelines. Note, they are different depending on whether you are submitting fiction or nonfiction. In the synopsis you really convince us about the woman you are featuring
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Submitters often do not include everything in one document. We really need exactly what it says in the guidelines. Otherwise we have to chase up bits and pieces and it becoems very messy. Work can easily get lost.

We like to know what else the writer has published, If the text is borderline, a previous publishing history may help.

We tend to read the first three chapters / 10,000 words for fiction. If we like the writing we'll study the synopsis and we can usually base a decision on that. For nonfiction we have to like the chapter summary and the sample of writing. In both cases we need to feel excited about the woman featured.

We do take notice of presentation and whether the author has followed the guidelines. This is an indication of how professional they are and how they might work with us in the future.

Each day after lunch I look at all the new submissions that have come in. A very few will get rejected straight away - usually because they've come into the wrong call, the material is clearly wrong for that call or is entirely the wrong length. The rest will be scored on length, suitability for the call, how easy the text will be to process, the quality of the writing, how well we know the author and their professionalism. When we have capacity for publishing another book - we usually do about two a month but it does vary - we'll offer a contract to the highest scoring author. We have eight editors. Only one can reject but all of us can accpet. If we accept we are also saying we have the time to see this book through the editorial process. Even if we don't have time, we can indicate that we think this submission is acceptable. We won't keep a submission more than three months and if we eventually have to decline an acceptable submission we invite the author to try again in six months time. We probably spend no more than an hour a day on this. The rest of the time we are editing, proof-reading, designing the book and marketing. And there is other admin, of course.

All of these texts go though three stages of editing:
1. a structural edit
2. a copy / line edit
3. an advanced proof-read
After that the author is given a camera-ready copy to proof and after we have take on any suggestions from the author we do a final proof-read.

Yes, we regularly put our books forward to the Rubery Awards , the Gothem Prize and the Kindle Storyteller Awards. We look out for other opportunities and are open to suggestions form authors.