Company Guidelines

*Before you go any further, please note that Burning Horse Media has no desire of publishing your book if it’s already been self-published or published by another company.*

What we’re about:

Burning Horse Media is always looking for authors trying to get their feet through the publishing house doors. We like to focus mostly on horror stories or dark thrillers but we are also heavily invested and interested in Sci Fi, celebrity (musicians, athletes, actors, etc) biographies, drama, children's books, mystery, etc. as well. Cookbooks are also very keen to Burning Horse Media as some of the folks behind the scenes here love to cook. We will gladly consider anything regarding stories of the occult, gore, violence, zombies, monsters, mystery, the supernatural, and death. However, we aren’t closed minded to the point where we won’t consider any other genre of writing. If you think your Sci-Fi story is good enough or if your heart-wrenching love story will tug at the heartstrings, contact us. While we specialize in the aforementioned genres, we are willing to give everything a chance if it’s good enough. Contact us, but first read our strict guidelines. 

Manuscripts currently must be written in English. We will distribute our books in the US, UK and Canada in paperback and digital/eBook format. For special occasions, we can offer a stylized hardcover edition but those will mainly be for established authors or for books that mandate it.

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• Most importantly, the manuscript has to be fully edited before submission. If a manuscript is submitted and there are grammatical errors all over the place, it will be sent back to the author to have it fully edited. If you can’t understand proper apostrophe use, comma use or don’t know the difference between “their/there/they’re” or “two/too/to” or if you apostrophize every word with an “s” in it, it will instantly be returned and a full edit will be requested. This isn’t texting or a social media outlet so you actually need to know how to write in proper English.
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• Burning Horse Media offers editing and proofreading services to cover this crucial element if you already have another company handling the task of publishing. Look through our services links and view our rates and gaurantees. We will gladly do a full edit of your manuscript if you want it be professionally edited before we look it over for the prospect of publishing it, though you will have to pay the standard rates accoring to our service plan. It must be noted that this only applies to manuscripts that need a ton of work and haven't yet even been considered for publishing. If we have made significant progress on the manuscript and we decide it's strong enough to be published, we may reduce the total cost of the inital charges for a full edit. However, if Burning Horse Media does decide to publish your manuscript because it's well-written, isn't rife with grammatical errors, fits our vision, and doesn't require an initial full edit job, we will fully edit and proofread the entire project to make it absolutely perfect with no additional cost to the author. 
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• If your manuscript is edited and reads smoothly, you’re on the right track. However, we won’t publish it if it doesn't fit within our standards: ie, it isn't written well, it's too convoluted, or is in a genre of literature that we don't specialize in. We also won’t publish a book if it’s simply a carbon copy of what’s popular these days. We want originality and creativity. It doesn’t matter what the book is about; if it’s terrific, there’s a great chance we will work with you. Don’t spend a lot of time developing your story or its characters; get things going rather quickly. When readers pick up books for consideration, they’ll skim the first chapter. If nothing happens or it’s sterile, they won’t buy it. We want books that will grab people’s attention so they buy it.
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• If you’re trying to get your non-fiction published, it has to be 100% accurate. You’ll need sources on record; tons of sources. When we read non-fiction, it must be accurate and truthful. If your non-fiction is not, or you can’t prove that it is 100% accurate (or at least filled with quotes of people who’ve gone on record), we won’t even consider the book.

• We are not into anything religious, either. If your book is overflowing with the ideologies of Christianity, Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, Druidism, Odinism, etc, we won’t consider it. That’s not our thing. Your books can have some underlying religious themes or your characters can be deeply religious, but if it’s a book promoting a type of religion or trying to enlighten others to your beliefs - or bashing other religions - we are not interested.
   
• We also aren’t into conspiracy theories or any of that nonsense. We don’t sleep with tinfoil on our heads and we have never seen black helicopters. We also don’t believe the government is poisoning us via airplane contrails. We don’t believe in conspiracy theories and typically don’t get along with people of this nature, so we probably won’t “get” your book.
   
• Plays, musicals, blog collections, and the like don’t interest us at all. Poetry does to a degree, but it has to be amazing with many other poems to coincide with it for us to consider it. Poetry is nearly impossible to sell so we only look at poetry that is mind-blowing.
   
• Nothing is too shocking for Burning Horse Media. Gruesome crime scenes, demented minds, twisted thoughts, bizarre or alternative sex, etc. does not shock us at all. If it’s infused into the narrative and it flows smoothly, that’s fine with us. However, we don’t want narratives that are over-the-top shocking just for the sake of being over-the-top shocking. That sort of literature doesn’t fly with us and people with any sort of intelligence will see right through it. If your work is trying to be shocking or graphic, it can’t be devoid of life or personality. It has to work with deep characters that actually have some sort of life to them. Graphic, gory, shocking nonsense without purpose will be rejected.

• If we like your book, please make sure the ending isn’t by-the-numbers. If we read the book and predict the ending halfway through and wind up reading the exact ending we thought it would be, we’ll have a problem. Nothing irritates us more than predictability because it reeks of unoriginality. If the story is great but the ending is subpar due to predictability, there’s a strong chance we won’t publish your book. 

• Any narrative or manuscript to be considered for publication through Burning Horse Media must be in e-format such as email, Word, Perfect, etc. We absolutely won’t accept anything handwritten. Printed form, as in hundreds of sheets of lose, printed paper - is not our favorite vehicle to read but they are accepted if that's the only way you can send it to us.
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• If you’ve gotten past all of this and you have passed our rigorous guidelines test, contact us right away!