ECHOBIRD PRESS

ABOUT ECHOBIRD

Echobird Press is a small imprint with the mission to provide quality fiction and poetry by diverse authors for diverse readers.
We desire to uplift voices and create community around writing for and from those voices that are usually lost in the noise.

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EQUITY AND SUSTAINABILITY

Echobird Press takes these two values most seriously.

Echobird is committed to making our business practices equitable, centering and highlighting BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ authors. We seek to educate ourselves and our community about equality in arts and literature, and that will foreground all of the work we advance.

Additionally, this heart-work can be exhausting, if we let it. Echobird also values sustainability in our endeavors: in how we utilize our resources, in how we take care of ourselves and our community, and in our business model.

We may not be as productive as other presses, but that sustainability allows us to select quality poetry and fiction to share with our community.

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DIVERSE COMMUNITY

We love our writers, readers and fans!

And because Echobird values equity in our practices and publications, we seek diversity within our authors as well as our audience.

We want to publish authors and works that celebrate and highlight diversity in their themes and characters. While quality writing comes first, we want to read characters that all folks can see themselves in, and themes that support diversity instead of tearing it down.

We want to foster communication amongst our community of readers and writers, to discuss these intricate and always evolving topics. To that end, we not only will provide forums for plugging into the conversation online, we will highlight them in our events.

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SUBMISSIONS

We are open for submissions! We have open reading periods for authors to submit the unsolicited manuscripts in poetry and for speculative fiction. We currently are not interested in other genres at this time. As we grow, we will be open to other submissions, but poetry and spec-fic are our personal passions and what we want to see more of in the world.

We always welcome questions and inquiries! Feel free to contact us for more information or suggestions. For more information on submission guidelines and open submission periods, visit our Submissions page.

Services

Our primary goal is to selectively publish books of poetry and speculative fiction throughout the year. The books that we select will have professional layout and publishing standards, including dynamic cover art. We will provide some marketing through our community, social media and events, however the bulk of the marketing must be accomplished by the authors themselves.

We also provide some select services for authors outside of our publication process for a small fee. For more information on the following services, please contact us at [email protected].

COPY EDITING

Detailed copy editing and proofreading of manuscripts is done by our on-staff copyeditor.

Copy editing is included with book contracts. Your copy edit will include:

  • grammar
  • spelling and punctuation
  • narrative consistency
  • syntax
  • tone & style consistency
  • overall flow
  • formatting
  • and, in the final draft, the on-page layout.

If you need more substantive, content or structural edits, just ask! While we do not do content-based edits routinely, this service is available on an individual basis.

Our editors are available to copyedit your manuscript, whether Echobird will be publishing it or not. Please send inquiries to [email protected].

COPYWRITING

Not enough time or creative juice to see a writing project through?

Our staff copywriters have experience as fiction and creative non-fiction writers, as well as creating copy for social media and marketing. Our staff copywriters can provide:

  • Book synopses and query letters
  • Book descriptions for multiple platforms and uses
  • Book metadata research for SEO and other searches
  • Ghostwriting for blog posts and articles

Pricing for copywriting will be provided on a project-by-project basis. Please contact [email protected] if you have an interest in copywriting services.

LAYOUT AND DESIGN

When it comes to crafting finished works, you need skilled designers to help you create the look and feel that you desire.

With years of layout and design experience, our designers at Echobird Press can provide layout and design services for a wide variety of projects:

  • Book covers
  • Flyers, brochures and postcards
  • Single and multiple-page ads and menus
  • Templates for letterhead, emails, Powerpoint and the like
  • Infographics and charts
  • Chapbooks, newsletters and zines, for print and the web
  • Special projects such as bookmarks, menus, pricelists, and the like
  • And, of course, books and ebooks!

Layout and design services will be invoiced at $35 per hour. Please contact [email protected] to get started with us!

SENSITIVITY READERS

Research is a part of every writer’s journey.

Sometimes, an author wants to write characters and themes that they have no personal experience with, but are the experiences of marginalized and often misunderstood and misrepresented populations. This can include racial and ethnic groups, religious affiliations, disabilities of various sorts, queerness and trans identity, neurodivergence, and many more identities.

Sensitivity readers are editors who will read your work to examine the realities and challenges of writing such characters and themes. They can help you create worlds and written works that are free of offensive content, stereotypes and bias, as well as provide some alternatives and fixes to this content. Especially when diversity is an important element of our writing, making sure it is done with compassion and care is important.

We have many different sensitivity readers on contract who will read your work and provide feedback. Fees for this service start at $500 for book-length manuscripts, however this may vary depending on how much smaller or larger your manuscript is. Please contact us with an approximate word count and a description of the kind of sensitivity reading you would like done for your manuscript.

OUR AUTHORS

WHO WE ARE

Echobird Press is a small imprint with the mission to provide quality fiction and poetry by diverse authors for diverse audiences. We desire to uplift voices and create community around writing for and from those whose voices are usually lost in the noise. We value equity and justice, quality creative works, and sustainability in how we run the press with authors and readers as our first priority.

Maxwell Pearl

Maxwell Pearl

Author
Courtney B. Winterborne

Courtney B. Winterborne

Author
Katrina Kaye

Katrina Kaye

Author
Kat Heatherington, poet author

Kat Heatherington

Author and Co-Founder
Terra Katherine McKeown

Terra Katherine McKeown

Author and Co-Founder

PUBLISHED WORKS

Check back frequently to see what new works we offer!

A Map Without Your Shadow

This collection of poetry charts the arc of a marriage, from the formation of the relationship and building a dreamed-of life together, through cycles and years of emotional abuse, and then into and through divorce... [Read more]

No Longer Water paperback

No Longer Water is a collection of poems welcoming raw emotion regarding the process of aging mindfully into a truer self. Here, aging is regarded as a gift rather than a burden. In particular, a... [Read more]

Break of Dawn paperback

Break of Dawn by Terra Katherine McKeown, Book 2 of the Alters, paperback Dawn Hollins’ life shattered into pieces. It was never easy living with dissociative identity disorder in the first place, especially since each... [Read more]

The Gatekeeper Wears Acrylics, paperback

The Gatekeeper Wears Acrylics, a collection of poetry by Court Winterborne, paperback Beginning in the jungles of the heart, The Gatekeeper Wears Acrylics takes the reader on journey through the shadows of loss, trauma and... [Read more]

Chasing Dawn paperback

Chasing Dawn by Terra Katherine McKeown, Book I of the Alters, paperback Post-doctoral fellow, burgeoning psychiatrist, and someone living with dissociative identity disorder, life for Dawn Hollins has always been hectic. Sometimes it feels like... [Read more]

Friends With Wings paperback

Friends with Wings by Maxwell Pearl, paperback The year is 2102, the earth is in crisis, and Trina, a gutsy young woman from a poor family, is forced to sell herself into slavery to pay... [Read more]

SUBMISSIONS

We welcome direct submissions from all voices, no agent needed, and we foreground the work by BIPOC folks and other people of color, as well as LGBTQIA+ writers.

Please follow us on social media or sign up for our Patreon to get all submission updates.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES – POETRY

We are now accepting unsolicited manuscripts for poetry. New and established writers welcome! Manuscripts should be previously unpublished; if work within them has been previously published, please ensure that you retain all rights.

We are interested in work that turns language into a spear to pierce the heart with a well-turned phrase, in work that is evocative and strong, that both tempts the imagination and twists the knife. We’re open to reading poetry in any form or length, though we confess a soft spot for free verse.

Manuscripts should be 40-80 pages in length, one poem per page, in .doc or .pdf format. If you are submitting something of larger size, please query us first.

It takes us 8-12 weeks to respond to all submissions in a given reading period; please be patient!

Multiple submissions are welcome; there will be a reading fee of $15 for each submission.

Simultaneous submissions are welcome! As a courtesy, please inform us if you receive another offer.

We may close our reading period at any time. Sign up for our newsletter and we will let you know when reading periods are on or off again!

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES – FICTION

We are now accepting unsolicited manuscripts for science fiction, fantasy and genre-defying speculative fiction work. We’re not interested in horror, thrillers or YA at this time. We’re also not interested in limiting the answer to the question “what is science fiction?” Your strange and wacky tales are welcome here!

We do want to see strong characters, depth in plot and worldbuilding, character growth, and action-based plots. We are open to novellas, though we are most interested in novel-length work. First books in series are welcome; please note that it is intended to be a series in your cover letter.

Simultaneous submissions are welcome, and there will be a reading fee of $15 for each submission. We prefer manuscripts that are evergreen and have never been published, but if you hold all rights to your work, we would happily consider previously published work.

Please send a cover letter, a synopsis of the novel, and the first three chapters of your manuscript as a .doc or .pdf for initial review. If we are considering your novel, we will request the rest of your manuscript at a future date.

We may close our reading period at any time. To hear about when submission periods are open, sign up for our newsletter, or check back frequently for changes to this page!

FAQ

1. Can I submit previously published or self-published manuscripts?

Yes. All previous ebook publications need to be discontinued from sale on any digital retailer and previous print publications would need to be out of print and removed from on-demand printing. The author must be in possession of all the rights. Please include information about the previous publication and previous sales of the book/series in our submission form. Our submission file format guidelines still apply to previously published titles. Do not send print-ready PDFs. If accepted, we will edit, design, and publish previously published titles through our normal publishing process.

We prefer books with an emphasis on good characterization, diversity, and strong action-focused plots. We will publish genre-specific pieces, but we enjoy genre-bending and works that fall between genres. Standard-issue epic/quest fantasy will not usually trip our triggers unless it has more to offer, and we appreciate weirdness and dark humor.

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