For submitting authors: Madrona Books welcomes submissions of booklength manuscripts. We’re best suited for authors working within the genres of literary fiction, memoir, longform ecological and adventure journalism, and select place-based genre fiction. Irrespective of genre, all authors with ambitious, emotionally nuanced manuscripts are encouraged to submit. To help you decide if your manuscript is a good fit, here are some comparable titles (from publishers we admire) that align with Madrona’s vision, style, and reading preferences. Also listed are some brief notes on why we appreciate these books:

Owls of the Eastern Ice by Jonathan C. Slaght

• A charming, fun, illuminating travelogue that also educates readers about the fish owl. Come for the adventurous anecdotes about drinking vodka with off-the-grid Russians, stay for the diligent and incisive ecological writing.

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton

• Catton’s novel is equal parts literary and thriller. But more than the stellar scenic writing, BW is a novel rich with characters quietly grappling to leverage one another, like a well-mannered judo match. Spoiler: until violence breaks out (gulp)!

This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno

• A novel about grief (oh, and supernatural curses) that isn’t weighed down by its subject matter. Moreno writes buoyant, wry, funny prose. Also, big kudos for references to John Carpenter’s The Thing.

Patricia Wants to Cuddle by Samantha Allen

• It’s weird, it’s genre-bending, it’s set in the Pacific Northwest. Allen’s novel is rooted in a raucous premise about a female sasquatch terrorizing the final few contestants of a Bachelor-style reality show. But it’s more than that (and even if it weren’t, we’d still love it)!

American Fire by Monica Hesse

• A true crime story that’s more about a community than a conviction. Hesse’s sentence-level writing is so good I’d read her next true crime book even if were about shoppers who ring up organic onions as regular onions during self check-out.

Spy Daughter, Queer Girl by Leslie Absher

• A well-structured memoir which tells the author’s coming-of-age story as a queer woman alongside the revelation that her father works for the CIA. When a memoir’s premise is this compelling, it’s often hard for the prose to hold up its end of the bargain. Fortunately, Absher is both a talented writer and an incredibly interesting person!

The River by Peter Heller

• Send us all the outdoor recreation novels, especially if they are written with a poet’s keen eye (as Heller’s novel is).

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

• Literary. Horror. Deeply rooted in place. Check, check, check!

  Severance by Ling Ma

• It’s a first job, workplace novel. And also it’s a zombie apocalypse story?! A book that succeeds at its myriad levels. (How is this someone’s debut novel?)

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Author compensation: Though author-publisher contracts vary by title, Madrona has established the following terms as its baseline compensation model. For print books, Madrona authors would be paid:

• 20% of all net dollar receipts on the book’s first $10,000

• 35% on the next $10,000

• 50% on net dollar receipts thereafter

This graduated royalty rate rewards authors who publish commercially successful titles. It also allows Madrona— a burgeoning press— to recoup its pre-publication investment in a timely, financially responsible manner.