Delphinium Books was founded in 1986 by Cecile Engel and Lori Milken. Their first anthology featured a wide range of authors including E.L. Doctorow, Grace Paley and Russell Banks. Today they focus on publishing literary fiction and the occasional work of nonfiction. You can get a feel for what they have recently published here. If you are serious about submitting to them, please spend a lot of time with their catalog first.
Their covers range from excellent to mediocre in my opinion, but most of them are well blurbed and many have audiobook editions. I did notice that most books did not have many ratings/reviews on Amazon. Their books have been finalists and award winners for a number of literary prizes.
On their about page they share the following: “Major book reviews and support from booksellers and librarians have contributed to Delphinium’s growth and distinction. Its unique distribution relationship with HarperCollins allows for editorial autonomy paired with the resources of one of the globe’s leading trade publishing houses.”
They don’t go into details about what that relationship involves, and indeed I couldn’t find anything online, except it was clear that some of the books Delphinium publishes are available through HarperCollins’s website. I’m not sure if they are distributed physically in stores as well.
They ask that unagented authors with complete manuscripts use their inquiry submission form. If they are interested they will request a minimum of 50 pages or several chapters. You are welcome at that time to include other information including your author bio and synopsis. If they are still interested they will request the full manuscript at that point.
They don’t have strict novel length guidelines, but 50,000 words is their minimum length.
They also link to self-publishing services they offer. This is becoming increasingly common with small presses, and is fine as long as they don’t redirect you from their traditional publishing imprint to their self-publishing services after you’ve submitted. If that does happen please send us an email at support@authorspublish.com.
To learn more, 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.
