Book Submission FAQ

I really want to write for Wizards of the Coast but I don't know how to get started. What should I do first?

This is a very common, yet very important question. The best way to get published by Wizards of the Coast is to send a submission to one of our open calls. Open calls represent actual openings in our schedule for new authors. To determine which open call you want to submit to, you'll first want to decide what kind of book it is you want to write.

If you want to write a speculative fiction book, you may want to check out the submission guidelines for our annual speculative fiction open call here (Independent Fiction guidelines.) If, however, you want to write for one of our shared worlds (Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Magic: The Gathering, and Eberron), you should keep an eye on the Wizards of the Coast Book Publishing webpage for open call announcements in the shared world of your choice.

Any submissions sent outside of the given submission windows will not be read, so please read the guidelines carefully!

Many prospective authors think that calling the company and pitching their ideas over the phone is the best way to get started. This is a myth. Chances are that the editor, or more likely, the assistant that you speak to will forget your idea and your name five minutes after you call because they have no concrete way to judge the quality of your work.

What kind of things do reviewers look for in a submission?

What we look for in unsolicited submissions is what most readers look for in a good novel, but the following items are the most common:

The first, and most important piece of advice, is: "Show, don't tell." The best way to achieve this is to write cinematically. Your writing sample should play like a movie inside the reader's head. In movies we can see what a character is thinking by what he or she does, and by how the character interacts with others.

The next item that a reviewer looks at is how the author handles action. Is it fluid and exciting?

A reviewer also looks at how the author handles dialogue. Do the characters speak normally or do they sound wooden and stilted? If the main character is a farm boy, he should not sound as if he were raised in a royal court. If a character has an accent or dialect, it should be consistent throughout. (For this reason we often caution new authors against using dialects or accents.)

Finally, the reviewer considers the condition of the sample. Is it clean and professionally presented? Has the submission been carefully checked for mistakes such as typos and spelling errors?

Huge blocks of tiny little type designed to cram as many words as possible into the allotted page count is always, always, always a bad idea. Be succinct, and do what you can to make reading your submission as easy and enjoyable as possible,

What about previously unpublished authors? Does it help to have an agent?

We do publish previously unpublished authors. In fact, we're publishing novels by two first-time authors this year. Of course, many of our first-time authors began by writing short stories in anthologies. This helps them hone their skills and develop relationships with the editors before taking on a full-length novel. Agents are important to established authors, but less so to beginning authors. We read and consider both agented and unagented submissions.

How important is good grammar in an unsolicited submission?

Very important. Send us the absolute best example of your writing. For some reason there is a misconception that "If my story is brilliant enough, grammar doesn't matter." The truth is that the last thing an editor wants to see in a potential author is someone who doesn't know how to proofread and revise his or her own work.

What kind of information should I include in the cover letter?

A good cover letter is one that is professional, typed, and tells us just a bit about your writing experience. The submission cover letter should never be more than one page long. Two or three paragraphs are plenty. Don't try to be cute or funny. While the joke may sound good to you, it is often seen as detracting from the submission by the reviewers.

How long does it take to respond to submissions?

The Wizards Book Publishing Department has a policy of reading each submission that comes to us properly presented and during our open call season. We will strive to respond to all submissions that come in from September 1st to January 1st by the end of April.

I really want to write for Mirrorstone books. What should I do?

Please check out our writer's guidelines. They include all the information you need to get started.

Go to the Book Publishing main news page for more articles and news about Wizards of the Coast books.