Strange Attractor is an independent publishing house based in London, founded in 2003. They are run by Mark Pilkington and Jamie Sutcliffe, who bring independent contractors to help with some components of the publication.
They have a well designed and easy to navigate website. Their books are widely available online as well as distributed internationally through The MIT Press, via Penguin Random House. You can learn more about the press here.
The vast majority of what they publish is nonfiction. I very much encourage you to spend some time with their catalog, before submitting. They are seeking books that fit within their larger publishing catalog.
This is what they say about the nonfiction books they publish: “our key interests being previously neglected or rejected areas of research and investigation. Ideally your research will be breaking new ground, or presenting new perspectives on a story that has been told previously. We look for books that present their author’s depth of research through engaging and accessible writing. We are not an academic publishing house, though we are distributed via MIT Press, but we do expect your research to be credible, backed up by evidence and fully referenced.”
They welcome proposals and submissions but you must carefully read this full page first, and really be sure of fit. Do not submit unless you feel fairly certain about fit, and follow the submission guidelines carefully.
They are not a poetry press, please do not submit poetry. They will consider select novels and short story collections, and they stress that are “interested in fiction that sits uneasily alongside other strange tales of science fiction, fantasy or the supernatural.”
They publish in paperback and do not offer advances (which is unusual for a nonfiction focused press). They ask that when you initially reach out that you send a brief summary that is about 800 words in length and also include a separate breakdown of chapters if you have that.
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 2024 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.
