Submissions Are Now Closed

Submissions are accepted annually between the dates of September 1st and February 1st. Any submissions received outside of that timeframe will not be read.

This is not a contest! It is a call for proposals from professional authors and aspiring professional authors.

Please read these guidelines very carefully before submitting. We have made some changes not only to the sort of subject matter we’re interested in, but the nature of the proposals as well. Submissions that do not conform to the guidelines will not be accepted.

Our annual open call is for a speculative fiction imprint that publishes novels with science fiction, fantasy, and/or horror elements for an adult audience. What we’re most interested in are books that are set in a contemporary or historical setting but with the addition of some SF, fantasy, and/or horror elements. Because we continue to enjoy great success with our shared world fantasy lines, we’re not looking for more of that sort of thing for this imprint. Likewise we’re not too keen right now on “straight” science fiction (far future settings, extreme high tech, etc.). We’re always open to supernatural horror. We are not interested in pornography, romance, or nonfiction of any kind.

We are looking for novels for an adult audience only, so please do not send short stories, short story collections, poetry, etc., or books for young readers.

Your submission may be sent through an agent or you may submit without an agent. Agents are free to ignore the September through February season and should feel free to contact us directly at any time of the year. Agents should contact us for additional exceptions to these guidelines.

Due to the high volume of submissions and our small editorial staff, we are not able to offer individual critiques of rejected proposals or manuscripts. Please do not call or email the editors to ask for opinions or to check the status of a submission. We do read every proposal, but try to understand that that means that each of us are reading hundreds of them every year on top of our very busy schedules with nearly a hundred releases a year in nearly a dozen different shared world lines.

What do you need to send us?

• A stamped, self-addressed envelope, with the Wizards address in the top left corner.
• A one-page cover letter that tells us anything about you that you think we might need to know. The letter should tell us if you've published before, if you have an agent, and if so who your agent is.
• An unaltered signed legal agreement*, included here (22k ZIP/PDF). You must be 18 or older to submit work to Wizards of the Coast.
• The first three chapters or first thirty pages of your novel, whichever is shorter.

How should this be formatted?

• Your first three chapters must be printed on one side of plain white letter-sized or A4 paper with 1-inch (2.5 cm) margins all around, and set in type no smaller than 11-point.
• Both the cover letter and the manuscript should include all your contact information, including name, mailing address, phone number, and if possible, an email address.

What will we not accept?

• Proposals submitted in any form other than a hardcopy. Please do not send your submission via email, or on floppy or CD.
• Proposals not accompanied by a signed, unaltered, legible copy of the legal agreement.
• Proposals with images, pictures, or drawings on the pages.
• Proposals received February 2nd through August 31st.

If we ask for your full manuscript you must send us the complete manuscript within ten business days of our request. So please do not send us a proposal for a work-in-progress, or an "idea."

We've had the pleasure of launching a number of writing careers, and we would like to launch some more, but that doesn’t mean we’re exclusively looking for previously unpublished authors. What we want are great books with the potential for reaching a cross-over audience outside the strict confines of the SF/fantasy/horror genres, and we’re casting our net as wide as possible to find those books.

Where should you send your proposal?

Wizards of the Coast Discoveries
c/o Book Publishing
Wizards of the Coast
P.O. Box 707
Renton, WA 98057-0707

Download a PDF version (17k ZIP/PDF) of these guidelines for your records!

*This document is presented as a compressed (zipped) Adobe Portable Document Format file (pdf). You need to have Adobe Reader installed to use it. Adobe Reader can be downloaded for free from the Adobe website.