FAQs

When we receive a submission we endeavour to read it and respond within six weeks. You will however, receive an automated response within 24 hours letting you know that your submission has arrived. If your book makes the grade and we think it will be a good fit for one of our imprints, we’ll get in touch. Successful authors will be contacted by our editorial team and the process of getting your book contracted and published will begin.

Even if you’re unsuccessful, we still encourage authors to keep trying. Authors receive constructive feedback on work they have submitted, with pointers on how to make improvements.

No, it’s not necessary to submit your work via an agency. We’re more than happy to work direct with you. In fact that’s how our business model is built. Some of our authors do have agents, but it is not necessary to have one in order to submit a manuscript.

The majority of our authors come straight to us. We do ask you to make sure you check our submission guidelines pages for essential information before you submit your books to us though. You can find that here:

Main Submissions Page

Submission Guidelines

Totally Bound Publishing submission calls

Pride Publishing submission calls

Finch Books submission calls

We are conscious that authors are usually eager to find out if they have been successful, and do try our hardest to give you a speedy response. In most cases, submission turnaround time is approximately six weeks, however, timescales can sometimes be delayed, for example if we have a very busy period.

We are currently looking at a six month turn-around from acceptance to publish date.

We would agree a suitable date with you that fits with the current release schedule and enables us all to have enough time to promote it effectively. We are currently looking at a six month turn around from acceptance to publish date.

Our standard contract is for four years. Some anthology contracts may be longer.

We will look at your concerns and will always address them. For the most-part our authors are happy with the standard contract because it’s been designed to be fair for you and is written in plain English.

Absolutely. We work with authors from many different countries. Your stories must be written in English, and we would need to ensure that our payment methods are acceptable for you.

Yes you can. If you feel your genres cross over, or you’d prefer to write M/M as one name and M/F in another, then we’re here to accommodate you. If you wish to remain anonymous as your other names, and not have anyone know you write as two or more people, again, we can accommodate you. Only our staff will know you are more than one person, and never, under any circumstances, will we reveal your identity. We are very committed to helping you in your publishing journey, and that includes ensuring you have no worries over other people knowing who you are.

Absolutely. Some of our authors work with a number of publishing houses.

Yes. Although we think that it's nice if an author decides to share a little of their background with readers and other authors (as you can see from the author profile pages, blog posts and author spotlights), we totally respect an author's wish to remain private. You can use any pen-name and give as much or as little information for fans as you wish and for our part we will ensure that your identity is kept confidential.

Yes, we offer trade paperback print books and some mass market as well as electronic publishing.

We offer 100% dedication and commitment to each and every author who publishes with our company. Our team are friendly and efficient and we believe that respect can only be earned. Communication and fast response times are essential to the relationships we forge with our authors. As part of the service and as a Totally Entwined author you can expect:

Solid marketing and PR strategy including but not limited to:

• Individual banner packs created for every one of your books, including images for post cards, bookmarks, social media and email banners.
• Regular ‘How To’ documents uploaded to the author portal to help new and seasoned authors alike to promote and market books alongside our own marketing and sales efforts on your behalf.
• Fabulous cover art to reflect your individual book or series. We ensure that you have a say in how your cover looks.
• Regular newsletters to our readers.
• Regular competitions and promotions of your books.
• Complete anti-piracy and fraud prevention system.
• Maximizing social networking to the best advantage.
• Work with numerous review sites and bloggers around the world.
• Work with PR agencies to boost promotion of your titles and build brand awareness.

Selling your books:

• Direct sales – your books will be sold direct from our website, be placed on pre-order six weeks before general release and always enjoy one month exclusivity at our shop before they are sold elsewhere. We provide the latest and most widely used download versions to your readers – ePub, Adobe PDF and Mobipocket. We also provide a send direct to kindle service.
• Author portal – you'll get access to a private author portal where we provide a multitude of 'how-to' documents to aide you in marketing and promoting your books with us.
• Distribution of your books – we work with a worldwide distribution platform to sell your books in multiple formats including eBook, Print and some Audio.
• We have a trade and mass market print solution encompassing USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, Europe, Australia, Japan, Brazil and many more.
• Work with international rights agents to enhance opportunities of your titles in different languages

Royalties:

• We have some of the best royalty rates in the industry.
• Without fail we provide monthly royalty payments, on time every month.

Full editorial support:

• Content Editor – upon contract with us at Totally Entwined you are provided with your own knowledgeable, professional and dedicated content editor. They will work to build a strong relationship with one person who will work with you on all of your future edits.
• Line Editors/Proofreaders – a second and third line edit takes place on all manuscripts before completion to ensure your book is edited to the highest standard.
• We have an author support group that works as a community for staff at Totally Entwined and our authors to interact. It is a place where we can inform you of any important notifications and you can ask us and other authors any questions you may have.

Monthly. We realise that it is essential for authors to receive regular royalty payments and always ensure that our authors are paid on time every month.

We always strive to ensure you are happy every step of the way. However, should there be times when you’re not happy, we hope you will come to us immediately, as soon as any problem arises. We offer an open-door policy. We can’t help you if we’re not aware of any issues, and if we can discuss what’s wrong sooner rather than later, it saves you any anxiety and ensures that everything runs smoothly. There is always an answer to every problem and we’ll do our best to find a solution that suits both parties. Rest assured, we are here for you, and together we can make your publishing experience a positive one.

A lot! A big part of what we do is centred around marketing your brand and your books. An average day in the life of a marketing campaign will involve a solid marketing and PR strategy, including but not limited to:


• Individual banner packs created for every one of your books, including images for post cards, bookmarks, social media and email banners.
• Regular ‘How To’ documents uploaded to the author portal to help new and seasoned authors alike to promote and market books alongside our own marketing and sales efforts on your behalf.
• Fabulous cover art to reflect your individual book or series. We ensure that you have a say in how your cover looks.
• Regular newsletters to our readers.
• Regular competitions and promotions of your books.
• Complete anti-piracy and fraud prevention system.
• Maximizing social networking to the best advantage.
• Work with numerous review sites and bloggers around the world.
• Work with PR agencies to boost promotion of your titles and build brand awareness.

Yes you can pay with your credit card at the PayPal payment screen. Just choose that option.

Yes, we accept PayPal payments. Choose to login to your PayPal account when our site redirects you to the PayPal payment page.

Yes, but it’s painless! If you’re purchasing any of our services we’ll need you to complete a Book information form.

You should be able to complete it in five minutes as long as you have all of the information on your book to hand.

Absolutely. We work with authors from many different countries. Your stories must be written in English, and we would need to ensure that our payment methods are acceptable for you.

Yes. If you decide you want more services than you initially paid for, you can log back into your account and make an adjustment.

Absolutely. We have experienced romance fiction editors, cover artists and marketing artists to provide all of the services you might need to get your book as polished as it can be before you publish it.

You’ll have an experienced romance fiction editor. Al of our editors have many years’ experience editing our published books and they’re some of the best in the business.

If we know that you intend to send us more than one book in a series we’ll do our best to ensure you get continuity for that series, with the same editor.

A standard practice your book will get three rounds of content edits and one round for a proofread or line edit. If we or you feel that more is needed, an additional charge would be made to cover additional time.

Please take into consideration that we are very experienced at what we do and you will get the best edits possible, however, we are not rewriting your book for you. So when you send us your manuscript it needs to be in a decent enough shape for us to work with. If you send something in that we feel needs more than our standard, we'll have a conversation with you so you can decide what you'd like to do.

It depends what stage we’re at in the process. If you’ve sent us completed files for distribution, you can log into your account and make title changes at any time.

If we’ve finished your edits and you’ve signed off on them, as long as we haven’t already made your versions, we can still make minor changes.

We can do British or American English. You choose!

We use a standard layout for all books. However, you can choose from multiple chapter headers and if there’s a specific image/design you want for your print file we can create it for you.

You complete a book information form, so you can send as much or as little information here as you like to ensure that our experienced romance fiction cover artist know what you want them to achieve. Obviously the more detailed the information the better idea they'll get. We suggest that you add links to images if there's a very specific look you want, and make sure you tell us if you want people or items, likes and dislikes etc.

Once the cover art mock up is made, we'll sent it to you so that you can decide if you're happy to sign off on the project. At this point you can have one major change if the cover just isn't doing it for you or up to three minor changes if you just want tweaks.

eBooks - For best results, give us a JPEG at 1500x2400.

Print – We need a PDF, CMYK color. You must send us the full cover flat, including front, back and spine and the spine must be the correct size for the page count.

Yes. We’ll send you some examples before we start your project so you can choose what you want.

The most popular format is a Word document. Upload your story in Word .doc or .docx format, and we'll convert it into an ebook. RTF is also fine.

Absolutely. You choose whether you want any services, or just distribution. Upload the files and we'll distribute it to all of our retail stores for you.

Our conversion process creates high-quality epub for us to distribute to your choice of retail stores. You’ll also get a .mobi and PDF.

Our current retail stores include: • Amazon • Apple • Audible • Baker & Taylor / Follett • Barnes & Noble • BiblioBoard • Bibliotheca • BlueBottleBiz • Bolinda • Bookish • Bookgrail • BookShare • BookShout • Bookwire • Bowker • Chegg • Christian Book Distributors • Copia • Dial-A-Book • Digital Access Media • eBooks.com • EBSCO • Edge books • Enki Califa • Epic • Findaway • First For Romance • Freading • Gardners • Google • Hoopla • Hummingbird Digital Media • iFlipd • Ingram CoreSource • ITSI • Izneo • JellyBooks • JSTOR • Kobo • Kortext • Libro.fm • Login Canada • Mackin • MBS • Microsoft • Odilo • OverDrive • Perlego • Perma-Bound • Playster • Prologue Numerique • ProQuest • Q • ReadHowYouWant • RedShelf • Scribd • Scoobe • Storytel • TecKnoQuest • Trajectory Explicit • Wheelers • WF Howes • 24 symbols

Yes! Everywhere - including Amazon.

Yes. You’ll get access to your sales and royalties via your author portal. From here you can manage all of the books we distribute for you.

Simply by logging into your sales and royalty portal and navigating to the tiles uploaded. From here you can adjust pricing.

Yes! You can schedule a promotional price for your book in your author portal.

Price changes should be scheduled as far in advance as possible. While some retail stores may make your price change in hours, some may take longer. Keep that in mind as you choose the starting date of your promotion.

Yes! You can set up pre-orders to most stores, ninety days to a year in advance of your chosen release date. We recommend pre-orders as a way to capture readers' interest prior to the book's launch and build up a powerful boost to your sales rank on release day.

Yes! When you publish, you’ll enter your book’s list price in US dollars. By default, we convert the provided price into the various currencies using the currency conversion rate at the time of publishing.

If you only want distribution, you’re opting for the self-pub model. Open Pub makes a percentage of each of your books’ sales, so we don’t get paid unless you get paid. Our fee is 10% of sales.

You can pick from three different options.

Self-pub Plan 1 is priced per service, with a 30 day notice period at any time. Our fees are 10% eBook royalties, 10% Audio royalties and 40% Print on net royalties.

Open Pub Plan 2 – You will only pay 50% of the total amount up front. We don't charge you the rest until your book is selling - so WE take the risk, not you. This plan has a 1 year distribution agreement for eBook and print. Our fees are 35% eBook royalties, 65% Audio royalties and 70% Print of net royalties. Audio has a separate agreement.

Open Pub Plan 3 - You will only pay 30% of the total amount up front. We don't charge you the rest until your book is selling - so WE take the risk, not you. This plan has a 2 year distribution agreement. Our fees are 25% eBook royalties, 55% Audio royalties and 60% Print of net royalties. Audio has a separate agreement.

We pay all authors via PayPal.

We pay all authors monthly, one month in arrears of payment from distributors. Our retail stores all have different policies on payments ranging between 60 – 90 days. Whilst we can't control that, as soon as payment is made to Open Pub we’ll pay you in your next monthly payment.

Contact Customer Support and we’ll assist you.

If you've already published your book through another distributor, you can still use Open Pub to expand your reach.

We don't hold the rights, you do. And we don't require exclusivity for eBooks and Print, so you can have your book anywhere.

If you produce an audio book with us, there's no upfront cost for production, but we do require am exclusive agreement for distribution, details of which are available in your author portal.

Yes! We'll automatically assign an ISBN to any book published through our system free of charge.

Absolutely! There's a field in the book information form where you can add it.

Yes. Anywhere. Once we've created it for you, it's yours to do with as you like.

It doesn't. You retain full control of your book’s copyright at all times. When you publish a project through our service, you give us permission to do any distribution necessary to release your book at our retail stores, but we never gain control of the book's rights.

We know how important privacy and security is to our authors and we're . You can see our privacy policy here.

Price Per Unit (PPU) is synonymous with Cost Per Checkout (CPC), a royalty structure that allows libraries to have access to the same title for more than one user. Rather than the full library cover price, libraries are granted access to a title and then pay per each loan of an eBook. This allows more readers to check the book out at a time, without forcing libraries to purchase multiple copies of the same book.

One Copy, One User (OCOU) and Cost per Copy (CPC) are both enabled by default for library distribution. The OCOU royalty option is always live and cannot be turned off except by removing your book from library distribution.