Every year Nightfire, an imprint of Tor, opens to submissions for a limited window of time. This year it’s June 15th through the 22nd. The opportunity opens and closes at 9 AM EST. Because it’s such a limited window, and because it’s an excellent opportunity, we try and promote it a little in advance so authors have some warning.
If you don’t want to miss the opportunity, schedule an alert on your calendar for it.
Nightfire is the horror imprint of Tor, so all submissions must be part of the larger horror genre, they can straddle genres; for example, dark fantasy is an acceptable genre. Tor is one of the most respected and award-winning science fiction publishers in the world and they have excellent distribution.
Nightfire accepts all submissions through the Moksha submission portal.
When submitting, upload your full manuscript, and also share your cover letter, which should include a pitch and a short author bio.
This is what they say in their what they are looking for portion of their submission call:
“The Nightfire team is looking for novels and novellas for adults across the breadth of the horror genre—from the cosmic and Lovecraftian to the beloved undead tropes of zombies, ghosts, and slashers and the more uncanny and internal terrors of isolation, lost love, and aging.
We are actively looking for submissions from writers from underrepresented populations. This includes, but is not limited to, writers of any race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, class, and physical or mental ability. We believe that good stories reflect the incredible diversity and potential of the human species, and want our catalog to show that.
We encourage you to scroll through our book announcements and to listen to our free audio anthology, Come Join Us By the Fire, to get a sense of our vision and tastes.”
They offer advances against royalties for both novels and novellas.
They are not interested in work aimed at anyone other than adults, and they are not interested in previously published work. They are not interested in nonfiction, short story, or novella collections for this call.
They prefer that work is not simultaneously submitted elsewhere, but they do not prohibit it from being submitted elsewhere. They ask that you notify them right away if it is accepted by another publisher.
Only submit one manuscript.
To read their complete guidelines and to receive links to their submission portal, go here.
Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The 2020 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.
