Note (February 14, 2008): We apologize for the inconvenience, but we are not accepting submissions right now. We'll post any changes to this on this page as soon as we're aware of them. For the time being, we're focusing our exclusive attention on publishing the work of Zoran Zivkovic. Thank you for your understanding!

What we're looking for

Our mission is to produce densely written sociological speculative fiction with deeply developed characters and to present it to the reader as a work of art.

By "densely written" work, we mean complete, nuanced world-building and time for characters to react to the changes and stresses around them. The prose itself is fine (literary), and characters tend to be written in Cherryh's "intense third person" format—meaning that readers are completely immersed in that character's thoughts and emotions. Existing examples of such work include C. J. Cherryh's Cyteen, Cherryh's Foreigner trilogy, Greg Bear's Moving Mars, and Ursulsa LeGuin's The Dispossessed.

We prefer a sociological, psychological, or political emphasis, with all the intrigue that can come with it—but we will consider other categories, such as adventure, so long as the other criteria are met. To sum it up: 1) character, 2) culture, 3) drama.

Remember that novel-writing has the benefit of being a cumulative art form. Slight layers build on slight layers, a detail here, a little exposition there—and the reader has the satisfaction of seeing a complete picture form. In theatre this method is called "a thousand points of light," and it is highly effective.

Matthew Cheney perhaps says it best. In an article for the Internet Review of Science Fiction, he writes: "Readers and writers have a choice: they can read and encourage writing that adds some of prose's values to primarily traditional narratives, which are better and more appealingly utilized by film; or they can try to read and write works that exploit written prose's strengths: the sensory values of language, intimacy of detail, movement between thought and action, the ability to convey information (history, etc.) easily through exposition... It's easy enough to write a traditional SF story that's not as interesting as a film; it's much harder to write one that tries to do only what prose can do."

        What we're NOT looking for

We currently publish only adult-level, novel-length speculative fiction. We don't publish traditional or quest fantasy (e.g. medieval settings, unicorns, wizards, etc.—our personal admiration for Lord of the Rings notwithstanding), military science fiction, slipstream, or horror.

A densely written story is by necessity somewhat limited in scope or put another way, has a more narrow focus. If you have an overarching storyline which extends from one end of the universe to the other, includes two galactic wars, or takes place over a century... it would be very difficult for you to write the work as densely as we prefer. By the same token, introspective characters who take the time to think and feel tend to be crowded out of purely action-based novels. If your story is told breathlessly, with quick pacing, it follows you haven't given your characters much time to think or react and that your manuscript would likely not be a good match with our publishing line.

One more caveat. We try to stay away from murder, unless it is extremely sensitively done. To us, the cruel and abrupt cutting short of an unwilling person's being, even if it's fictional, should not be fodder for entertainment. Life is precious. We do not intend this as a criticism of any person, company, or genre—we are simply very careful about this in what we publish.

Note (September 2004): We posted the following in July: "We've been besieged with manuscripts in which the setting is Earth. There is nothing wrong with this, but as a publishing house in a genre where the entire universe is the writer's oyster, we would love to see more work set elsewhere!" Because we do not want to produce a 100% Earth-based publishing line, we are closing Earth-based submissions unless it is solicited by us. If your novel is set on Earth, please do not send it to us; it will only go into the recycling bin. Please save yourself unnecessary grief! (For as long as this paragraph remains on this web site, this prohibition remains.)

Note (June 2006): We also frequently receive submissions consisting of prose that is not literary. We aren't of the school of thought that says prose should be transparent and plain in order to avoid distracting from the story. As above, we're looking for prose that does shine, and for a distinctive authorial voice. If your prose style is plain or cannot be distinguished from the writing of most authors, alas, you likely won't be a good fit with our publishing line. That's not to say your work won't be a fantastic fit with another house, though! We simply encourage you to think carefully about whether your work fits the description of what we're looking for before submitting it.

Submitting your manuscript

If your work meets all of our criteria, we'd be delighted to hear from you! Please read below for specific instructions on submitting your manuscript.

If it does not, bravo for acknowledging you have your own style, and that it is not what we publish—but what others certainly may. A writer does best when following his or her passion, and we wish you the best of luck in following your own muse.

Please submit your complete manuscript by mail to:

Tiffany Jonas
Aio Publishing Company, LLC
P.O. Box 30788
Charleston, SC 29417

Include a cover letter including a brief synopsis of the story, a quick bio, and your email address. We are open to both series and stand-alone fiction; if your manuscript is intended to be part of a series, please do identify it as such.

We ask that you use a standard serif font such as Times New Roman (please do not use Courier), standard-sized paper, margins a minimum of one inch in size, and a laser printer or quality copy machine. As we're environmentally friendly, we prefer single-spacing in order to conserve paper; for the same reason, we prefer to receive the first three chapters in printed form and the rest on disk or CD in .doc or .rtf format; however, if you already have a fully printed manuscript in hand we'll accept that as well.

If you'd like to confirm your manuscript made it to our location, please invest in the inexpensive "delivery confirmation" service offered by the U.S. Postal Service. Don't make us stand in line to sign for your manuscript! If you would like a response and/or your manuscript returned, include a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

We don't accept simultaneous submissions or electronic (emailed) manuscripts at this time—with the exception that if you email us to ask ahead of time and you live outside the U.S. or Canada, we'll often accept an emailed manuscript to save you from a large postage bill. (Please be aware that our response time is usually slower with electronically submitted manuscripts, though, as we must be sitting in front of the screen to review them.) We do accept unagented manuscripts.

        Response time

We offer one of the quickest response times in the industry, generally four weeks. If you have not heard from us in four weeks, please contact us.