Grendel Press’s tagline is that they are “dedicated to publishing the finest works in dark fantasy, horror, and dark romance”. You can learn more about the press here. They are named after the antagonist in Beowulf. They say “By choosing this name, we pay homage to the complexity of Grendel’s character and the questions his existence raises. What defines a monster? Who gets to tell the story? And what happens when we step into the darkness to see the world from a different perspective?”
Their team page is here, and it is organized in a bit of an unusual way, not leading with the founder/head editor, who is actually listed towards the bottom of the page. The Editor-in-Chief and founder is Susan Russell. As part of her bio it says: “I started editing with a team of international writers for a gaming website, picking up freelance editing work on the side. That’s when I fell in love with the process of untangling stories, finding their beautiful bones, and thinking, I can fix this.
It wasn’t long before I noticed a trend: self-publishing was booming, but so many of the books I read could have been elevated with the right editor. So, I started small, offering my services to authors who, over time, became not only my clients but also my biggest supporters.
Now, I’m taking the next step with Grendel Press—a home for the dark and daring stories we love. My goal? To elevate the quality of our favorite genres and build a catalog of books that you’ll treasure. It’s a dream I’ve nurtured for years, and I’m so thrilled to share it with you!”
So it’s clear that Russell started out as an editor, moved into publishing services, and then, this is the unusual step, founded a company that is a traditional press. This is an orange flag for me, just because it is an unusual situation but they do seem to make it very clear that they are a traditional press on their submission page, if you scroll down to contract type, they include the details of both their traditional contract and their royalty forward contract. Both contracts say this at the top, “includes editing, cover design, typesetting, and marketing at no cost.”
This situation is a little unusual from my perspective, but the contract types seem fair based on what they shared. Of course I haven’t seen the actual contracts.
I’d also be remiss to not mention that at least two members of the team are also authors published by Grendel Press.
The site itself is well-designed, and easy to navigate, it’s mostly orientated towards selling books, but submissions are mentioned on the home page. Their covers are a little hit and miss for me, but are genre-appropriate. They do not appear to have distribution.
In terms of dark fantasy they are looking for: anti-heroes as main characters, dark worlds, battling inner demons, and Grimdark.
For horror they are open to most submissions with a particular focus on psychological depth over shock value.
For dark romance they are interested in dark fairy tales, enemies to lovers, strong emotions and high stakes.
They can’t accept fanfiction of anything with copyright issues. They are not interested in content that promotes intolerance or gratuitous gore or violence with no purpose. They are also not interested in stories that glorify, minimize or inaccurately represent abuse or assault.
Work must already be complete when submitting. They are open to novellas and novels, starting at 25,000 words and going up to 120,000 words.
They have strict manuscript formatting requirements. You can read their full submission guidelines here. They try to respond to submissions in 16 weeks.
Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The 2025 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.
