Due to high volume, submissions are temporarily closed.

Please follow guidelines carefully. Any submission not meeting these guidelines will be filed in the circular file, never to be seen again.

First off, are we the right publisher for your book?

The only way to know that is to try a couple of our titles and see for yourself. We only publish mystery/crime fiction, and are partial to certain styles over other ones. We generally publish manuscripts between 65,000 and 95,000 words in length.

What are the guidelines?

Email a query letter (1 page or less) to alexcole@capitalcrimepress.com . NO ATTACHMENTS. If possible, make your query brilliant. That will help your cause tremendously. It should be succinct, and include a brief hook for your mystery novel, word count, as well as any marketing ideas you might have.

Why no attachments? Don't we want to read your manuscript right now?

Well...if there is not a great hook for your story, then it doesn't really matter how well written it is. Selling books in today's market is a tough proposition. So the first step is a great query letter. That tells us if you know how to market  your book.

Wait a second, why does the author have to know how to market a book?

Capital Crime Press will do everything we can to make each book a success. We have good distribution, a small (but decent) marketing campaign, send out Advance Review Copies, and get national reviews. But it takes much more than that for success. We believe that the biggest determination for an author's success is the author himself (or herself). The author is on the front line of this battle, getting his/her book in people's hands. Once everyone does the best they can getting the book out there, that's when word of mouth has a chance to take over and something truly special is possible. This is the point where your great novel starts selling itself.

We hope we haven't scared you off, but if we have then we probably aren't the right publisher for you.

Best wishes, and good luck!