Schaffner is an established press with distribution through IPG. They publish literary fiction, short fiction collections, and crime fiction. They also publish a wide variety of non-fiction including memoir, autobiography, biography, journalistic expose or narrative, true crime, art, culture, pop culture, world history, current events, science, and music.
Schaffner Press is owned and managed by a former literary agent.
They publish a lot of work by established writers, but they do work with new authors as well.
Their website is easy to navigate and the book covers are generally excellent. The focus is on selling books. It’s easy to get a feel for what they are interested in publishing by browsing their catalog.
They consider manuscripts between 60,000 – 100,000 words.
If you are submitting you must query first via email. If they are interested they will contact you and ask you to submit the full manuscript via the post. They try to respond to submissions quickly if they are interested.
Their full submission guidelines are 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.
