Submit your manuscript

We don't keep a genre list

Lion publishes fiction, and inside fiction we're genre-agnostic. Epic fantasy, weird western, YA, middle grade, picture books, horror, cozy, thriller, historical, literary, science fiction, and whatever you've written that doesn't have a shelf yet — all of it is in scope. We've never turned down a book for being in the wrong lane, because we don't have lanes.

If someone has told you that your book is too weird for the market, or too clean for the market, or too something for the market, we'll at least read it before we say the same thing.

• Epic fantasy
• Weird western
• YA
• Middle grade
• Picture books
• Horror
• Cozy
• Thriller
• Historical
• Literary
• Science fiction
• No shelf yet

What story-first means

our version of "noblebright"

Our books feature real stakes, flawed characters, and universal truths.

We use the word noblebright, and it gets stretched, so here's our version.

It doesn't mean happy, or clean, or Christian. A brutal book can be noblebright. A cozy fantasy can miss it entirely. What matters is whether the darkness in a book is doing work towards an ending that reflects virtues such as courage, wonder, self-sacrifice, moral clarity, family, and personal agency.

Our stories are those worth reading because they endure. Because they teach people of all ages the reality of human nature. Because they leave the reader with a sense that there is good in the world, and that integrity is not a lost art.

Things that will get you a no

• An unfinished manuscript. Complete and revised, please. We'll do a real developmental edit with you; we won't write the first draft with you.
• Book three of a series when someone else holds books one and two. We'd take book one. Send it when the rights come back.
• Anything you're not willing to remove from KDP Select. The exclusivity runs in 90-day terms that renew automatically, and unpublishing the book doesn't end the term — it encumbers the ebook even under a new ISBN with a new publisher. Check your dashboard before you query, and now that your book (the original version, or ours) will need to be unpublished for a minimum of 90 days. (We found this out the tedious way.)
• Art with murky ownership. If your book already has maps, illustrations, or a cover, tell us who made them and what you agreed to. “A friend drew it and we never wrote anything down” is workable. “I'm not sure” costs us both a month.
• A submission whose main ask is an advance. We don't pay them. Details below, so you can stop reading here if that's a dealbreaker.

The deal, up front

• No advances. As of 2026, we're operating lean. We hope to one day add author advances to our book deals, but right now, it's not an option for any author.
• Royalties well above small-press norm. Escalating as the book sells, and they stay that way in perpetuity.
• Marketing and distribution are our job. We're not going to ask about your platform and then hand you the marketing plan. If you've built an audience, we'll be glad of it, and we'll use it. If you've got a finished novel and 200 followers, we still want to see it. Finding readers is what a publisher is for.
• We sell direct. lionpublish.com is our primary channel, and the margin there is what makes those royalty rates possible. We'll ask you to point your readers at it — that's in the contract, and it's also where your per-copy check is biggest.