Dancing Lemur Press is a small US Press that has been actively publishing work since 2009. They are based in North Carolina and seem to regularly participate in local events.
They don’t have active distribution, which is to say that although they are distributed with Ingram, Ingram is not actively involved in placing their books in bookstores. On their about page they also don’t disclose who works there.
Their main page focuses on promoting books versus recruiting authors, which is a good starting point. Their covers strike me as not particularly good, but you can judge for yourself here.
They are currently open to the following genres:
Science fiction: Prefer adventure/space opera and military genres.
Fantasy – Paranormal: Prefer paranormal, open to others.
Middle Grade: All genres, especially historical. No picture books – chapter books only.
Christian: Inspirational and contemporary fiction.
They specify that “Salacious, negative, and R-rated material will not be considered.” They also won’t consider “memoirs, YA outside of contemporary, westerns, lbgtq+, poetry, text books, business, spiritual outside of Christianity, adult romance, strong horror, etc.”
To me the ban on LGBTQ+ submitters stands out as not a good sign. Although most Christian publishers do not accept content containing LGBTQ+ material they do not explicitly state it. I was conflicted about reviewing this press because of this.
They accept submissions via post and email. They say that they have between a 2 and 4 week response time, which is very fast. They also run an imprint called Freedom Fox which is for more marketing savvy writers, and has different guidelines.
The submission guidelines also ask that you include a marketing plan. This makes it clear that ultimately the author holds most of the responsibility for marketing when publishing them. You can review their full submission guidelines here. You must follow all of their submission guidelines to get a response.
Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The 2021 Guide to Manuscript Publishers.
