I had dinner with David Rix of Eibonvale Press when I was in London last week, and we spent a pleasurable couple of hours catching up on book news. David has been busy hatching plans as usual, and I was particularly delighted to hear that he’s going to be publishing a new line of chapbooks, and that he’s opening for submissions right now.
There’s something beautifully satisfying about a chapbook. Their small size makes them easily portable, their generally lower cover price means you can take a chance on a writer you might not have come across before, and their restricted word count makes for an intense and satisfying reading experience, a total immersion in story that isn’t always possible with a novel, where you usually have to keep breaking off to do other things. A chapbook can be consumed in a single sitting, and can often resonate more powerfully as a result.
Possibly my most memorable chapbook reads of recent years have been Alison Moore’s ‘The Harvestman’, and M. John Harrison’s ‘Getting Out of There’, both from Nightjar Press, who have been putting out wonderful chapbooks for a number of years now.
With the new Eibonvale chapbooks line, David is particularly keen to hear from new voices, so anyone who’s been holding back a story, not quite sure where to send it, this could be the ideal place! David loves dark, strange fiction with an experimental edge, the weirder the better. He’s looking for individual, standalone stories of around 10,000 words in length, so plenty of room for things to get interesting.
And as it has suddenly occurred to me that I have never yet seen my work published in chapbook form, I might very well be submitting something myself…
You can read the Eibonvale press release here, and download the full submissions guidelines, including information on format and payment, here.
I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of stories this call brings forth!