Updated September 9th, 2025
Tenebrous Press is a publisher of “New Weird Horror, and New weird SF&F, and other dark and strange genre mashups.”
They know this genre is one that needs further definition, because they have an entire page of their website devoted to defining it. You can see that webpage here if you are not already familiar with the genre, which was according to the web page, invented by the press, although the term “New Weird” has existed for some time, they added the focus on horror.
They published their first book in 2021. You can find out more about the editors here.
Tenebrous is currently open to submissions of novellas, novels, collections, gamebooks, graphic novels,mixed projects, nonfiction, and “weird unknown other things” only from people of color during September and October. In November and December they will be open to submissions from all authors.
They offer advances and “industry standard royalties. They are seeking work that starts at 20,000 words. They have no fixed upper limit. They are upfront about the rights they are asking: “World English first rights in print, electronic, and ebook, and a three-year exclusivity period. All copyright belongs to the author”. They try to respond to all submissions within three months.
You can get a feel for what they previously published here. They also share samples if you want to get a better feel for the actual books.
They seem to really understand the niche they operate in. Their covers are great, and genre-appropriate, and the books I looked up that they’ve published all got a lot of reviews for a small press offering and these reviews were mostly positive. You can see one of their books’ Goodreads pages here.
I’m not sure who their distributor is, or if they have one.
To learn more, and potentially submit if your work is a good fit for them, 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.
