Aethon Books is a print, eBook, and audio book publisher that focuses on Science Fiction and Fantasy. They are open to all sub-genres within these genres including Hard Sci-fi, Epic Fantasy, Space Opera, Military SF, Alt/History, and Time Travel and this summer they started accepting Thrillers. This includes books for young adults, although they haven’t published many yet.
One of their focuses is on the audio book market and getting good voice actors to record their stories. This is a good sign, as the audio market is rapidly growing and there are a lot of opportunities within it currently.
They print on demand, and even though they have a distributor, it’s Ingram, so you aren’t as likely find them in brick-and-mortar stores, but it is possible to order their books. They have built up a solid fanbase of readers and a track record of genre publication which is helpful. Their eBooks appear to generally do well in terms of sales, ranging from 50-100 Goodreads/Amazon ratings to 3,000+ ratings. They’ve published a number of Amazon Bestsellers in major genres, not just niche sub-categories. They publish a lot of books every year. Even though they only recently open to Thrillers last year, they have already released eight thrillers, and they have published over 700 books across all the genres.
Their covers are well-designed and appealing within the context of genre. You can get a feel for what they have previously published here, but they very clearly favor series. To learn more about the publishing team behind Aethon, you can go here. Right now the submissions they are most actively seeking are Thrillers, particularly Action, Political, and Military Thrillers. In all genres they are most concerned with story. They have a thriller by Timothy Zahn scheduled for publication next year.
They are only interested in publishing novel-length work. They say they offer some of the highest royalty rates in the business but they don’t say what their royalty rates are. They do not offer advances but they seem to have good clear marketing strategies, which is always a plus.
When you submit to them they want the first 50 pages of your manuscript, which is an unusual number. They generally only respond to submissions they are serious about publishing but you can query them after 90 days.
To learn more or submit, go here.
Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The 2023 Guide to Manuscript Publishers. She regularly teaches three acclaimed courses on writing and publishing at The Writer’s Workshop at Authors Publish. You can follow her on Facebook here.
