Frequently Asked Questions
What are your submission guidelines?
You can find those here: https://knightwritingpress.com/submissions/
What rights are you asking for?
Exclusive until such time as the anthology the story will be in has been published.
What are you paying?
Royalty share only, and only through Draft2Digital.
Do I have to have a Draft2Digital account to submit a story?
No. But if your story is accepted, you will need to have a Draft2Digital account in order to receive royalty payments. If you would like to use our affiliate link to sign up for an account with Draft2Digital, it would be appreciated, but not in any way required. https://www.draft2digital.com/knightwritingpress
Do I really have to have a Draft2Digital account in order to get paid?
Yes. We will not pay with PayPal, or any other way, instead.
I still don’t get how the whole Draft2Digital thing works…
We use Draft2Digital as our printer and distributor. When they collect payment from the retailers, they will take out their fees and then directly pay royalties to each author. Knight Writing Press never touches your royalties.
Can I submit my novel to you?
No.
Will you publish my novel?
No.
Why won’t you publish my novel?
The amount of time, money, and effort it takes to publish and promote a novel is bigger than most people realize. In order to afford to be able to do that, we would either have to charge you enough you wouldn’t want us to publish your novel, or we would have to take a large enough percentage of the sales you would regret publishing your novel with us.
I still don’t understand how much you pay for your stories…
Royalty share is when each author (and the publisher, and in our case the formatter, cover designer, etc.) gets a share of the net profits from each sale. Typically, our authors earn between 4% and 5% of the royalties from each sale. A typical profit from a sale (varies on title and sales outlet) is around $3. This means each author earns around 14¢ for every book sold through a retail outlet. The more authors promote the books, the more sales happen, the more authors earn. If ten books sell, the author earns $1.40. If a hundred books sell, the author earns $14.00. There is no limit.
What primary services do you offer?
At this time we are not offering any services.
I still want you to publish my novel…
Truthfully, you would, if you did it correctly, be better off self-publishing your novel. What we do is more a labor of love than of profit, and we do it to benefit new authors.
Do you offer editing services?
No.
What are the rates of your services?
At this time we are not offering any services.
I see you are an Amazon Affiliate (associate?). Why do you have links to other bookstores?
We love all bookstores. With the exception of a few of our early titles, our books are available to any retail outlet, and we love to support our local stores. Which have been kind enough to support us as well. (We love you Laura! )
What is a Books2Read Universal link?
It is a link that links to multiple retailers. Some of the bigger retailers (Amazon, Apple, etc.) will not carry a title that has links to a competitor’s store. The Books2Read Universal link helps side-step that problem.
Why did you reject my story?
If you receive a rejection letter (from anyone, not just Knight Writing Press), it is important to keep a few things in mind. A rejection almost never has anything to do with you personally (and really almost never should), so you should do your best not to internalize it. The reverse is also true: you should never hold bad feelings for the person/business for their choice, because there is a very good chance you do not have enough information to know why or how they made that decision.
The reasons for a rejection—from anywhere, not just Knight Writing Press—are myriad. It could be the story/poem/art/etc. just did not catch the editor’s eye. It could be the editor did not feel it fit the project. It could be there were too many stories and not enough room/money to include them all and yours drew the short straw when a choice had to be made between two favorites. It could be yours was very similar to another story some other publication just published and the editor didn’t want their new publication to be compared with that other publication. Nearly any reason you can imagine, that has nothing to do with you or the quality of your story, is an actual possible reason.
Here are some things to consider about your submission, to determine if perhaps there actually was a factor you may have had control over:
Did you follow the submission guidelines? Were you within the appropriate time frame? Was the story within requested word count limits? Did it fit the theme of the project? Did you submit the document in the correct file format? Did you submit the document with the correct formatting? Did you proofread your document before submitting it? Did you provide contact information for yourself?
Like nearly everything, writing is a skill, and people who practice continue to improve. Submitting a story to a publisher is also a skill, much like going into a job interview. If you made any of the above mistakes, or some other not mentioned, do not berate yourself over it. Pick yourself up, learn from it, and keep on keeping on. That is how all of the best keep improving and moving forward.
Why did I get an impersonal “form rejection?”
We receive many submissions, which is both a wonderful and a terrible thing.
If you have never received a form rejection before, here is what the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America has to say about them: https://www.sfwa.org/2021/08/24/short-fiction-rejection-letters-best-practices-and-expectations/