Submission Guidelines:

Submissions are currently closed

We are not currently accepting submissions. If you have a manuscript submitted during our last reading window and haven’t received a response within six weeks from the time you sent it in, get in touch and we’ll see if it fell between some cracks.

For future reading windows, check back on this page or follow Bad Dream on Twitter or Facebook.

Handy tips for submitting to us (or any other publisher)

  • Read and follow the guidelines. It seems simple enough, but any editor or slush reader will tell you that getting most people to do it is like squeezing water from a rock. A very, very dry rock. The simple fact is that we’re likely to end up with a quarter of all submissions not even fitting the genre we asked for. Start ahead of the pack in any publisher’s submission window by paying attention to what they’re looking for and following the simple rules they give you for submitting your manuscript.
  • Be patient; most submission call-outs for any publisher result in a pretty large slush pile for readers and editors to dig their way through. Sometimes things get lost or fall through the cracks, so if you haven’t heard back within the response time then by all means reach out to us, but not before then. You’re not doing yourself any favors by bugging the editor when your submission is still within the window.
  • Don’t respond to rejections. Really, even it it’s something nice like a ‘thank you for the consideration anyway’, it’s just adding to a likely already full inbox (editors do appreciate the sentiment, just not the time). And if it’s something negative, instead reevaluate whether you should even be trying to participate in the world of publishing, because you likely don’t have a future in it if you’re that kind of person. Fix your life.