Updated January 2025
In early March 2024, Strauss at Writer Beware published a blog post about City Owl which you can read here. It’s a complex ongoing situation and one we are monitoring but I wouldn’t submit to City Owl without spending time reading the post and all the comments first. Some of the comments are very helpful and go beyond the scope of the initial article. The article has not been updated since late March 2024.
City Owl Press is a publisher of Adult and New Adult Romance and Speculative Fiction. They publish the following sub genres: Contemporary Romance, Historical Romance, Paranormal, and Sci Fi Romance, as well as Romantic Suspense, Time Travel Romance, Dark Fantasy, and Urban Fantasy.
They are explicitly not interested in work in the dystopian, gaslamp, steampunk, or contemporary fantasy genres.
The publisher was founded in 2014 and initially had some growing pains. You can read the thread about it here. While they still pay on net rather than gross, most of the other complaints have been dealt with. They no longer offer marketing packages (which was always done through a separate submission process), and they have a larger and more experienced staff. You can learn more about the staff here.
The covers are very genre, but generally good.
I have not seen their contract so I cannot comment on it. But they are upfront that the royalties are 40% on net for digital editions. After 1,000 units have sold this increases to 50%. They offer four year contracts with six month extensions.
The novels they are interested in are at least 50,000 words in length. They consider novellas that are between 20,000 and 50,000 words.
All unsolicited submissions must be composed of a query and the first ten pages. Manuscripts should be pasted into the body of the email. Formatting is not a concern. The manuscript you are submitting must be complete. Only submit to one editor at a time. They have a response time of under two months. Not all editors are open to submissions, but at least two generally are.
As far as distribution goes, they have two different options for eBooks. One they call “wide” to all retail planforms. They don’t go into further details about it. The other is exclusively digitally published as part of Amazon Kindle Unlimited (KU) program.
Their print books are distributed through Two Rivers Distribution (which is an imprint of Ingram).
They also answer some frequently asked questions if you scroll down on the submission guidelines. They accept previously published work as long as the rights belong to you.
To learn more visit their website here.
Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, The 2019 Guide to Manuscript Publishers, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The Authors Publish Guide to Children’s and Young Adult Publishing.
She occasionally teaches a course on manuscript publishing, as well as a course on publishing in literary journals.
To learn more visit their website here.
