UPDATED July 27th 2022, they have a pretty permanent looking closed to submissions.
Uproar Books was founded in 2018 by Rick Lewis, who has a background in marketing, not publishing. Uproar books published its first book in early 2019. They only publish epic fantasy and science fiction for adults and young adults, and they are only interested in publishing series of books (although only the first one needs to be completed when you initially submit).
You can learn a bit more about their limited history here. Their website was a little hard to navigate, but it was mostly well designed. My biggest issue is that they seem almost equally focused on recruiting writers and readers. It’s a much better sign if a publisher focuses on recruiting readers.
It’s also a little surprising because over and over on the website the focus is placed on the company’s expertise on marketing, yet when I looked into the individual books, I couldn’t find much marketing about them.
That’s not the only warning sign. On the website they say “Uproar Books LLC. is the halfway point between self-publishing and a traditional publishing house,” which is not a good sign, yet elsewhere on the site they make it clear that they don’t charge authors and pay themselves only using royalties, which is what a traditional publishing house does.
They also have a page called Our Services, which is usually a terrible sign, but in this case it outlines all the services they provide for free if your book is accepted.
One of the positive signs is they outline how much they pay their authors, 50% of the proceeds (with they define as including all the revenue received by Uproar Books minus production and shipping costs).
They also haven’t been around for very long. At the time of writing this review, they have just met my requirement of having been actively publishing books for a year.
That said, I like that they are focusing on series, and they seem to have clear financial reasons for some of the decisions they made, and they share the reasoning with readers of the site.
I do think that a lot of my issues could also have something to do with the publisher not having familiarity with the industry at large, but I don’t think that’s the best sign in the long run.
After reading the website I had question about their distribution, and Rick Lewis, the editor answered them by saying “We have a sub-distribution partnership with BPC, providing us with print distribution throughout the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. through their established channels, which include direct distribution, Ingram, Baker & Taylor, Bookazine, and others. We’ve recently secured an order from B&N for all four titles we’ve launched to date to be carried in their brick-and-mortar stores.”
There’s a number of specific things they are looking for in terms of submissions, so if you are interested in submitting I encourage you to review their guidelines carefully.
To learn more or to submit, go 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.
