UPDATED MAY 21st, 2015: Ace/Roc is not currently accepting unsolicited submissions and their submission guidelines page  has been removed.

Ace/Roc, the science fiction and fantasy imprint from Penguin, has a slush pile. A slush pile a place where writers who do not have agents or previous publication experience can submit. Not only can writers submit there without an agent, many books, even whole trilogies have been chosen from the slush pile in recent years. In fact submitting to Ace/Roc directly seems to have no effect on how seriously they consider your submission.

As a long time science fiction reader I will say that I have read many of Ace’s titles and have always been impressed by the tittles that I have purchased from them. I  have read less fantasy, but I am assured by friends that Roc is similarly respected within that genre.

I have heard from a number of authors who have been published by Ace/Roc, and all spoke of highly of the publisher. Any minor complaints were directed at individual editors and how they edited the writer’s book.

Ace/Roc accepts submissions of query letters via email. They expect to see the first ten pages of your novel with your query letter in the body of the email. Editors will not open attachments. If you are not sure about how to write a query letter you can read our article about it here.

Ace/Roc is not interested in short stories or collections of short stories. They want to receive query letter submissions by authors who have already completed their manuscript. Completed manuscripts should be between 80,000 and 125,000 words. All work should Times New Roman 12 point font.  Only submit one project via email at a time. Allow for a response time of around five months.

To learn more visit their website at http://www.us.penguingroup.com/static/pages/specialinterests/scifi/submission.html