Dear Writer,

Thank you to the many of you who have entered our most recent contest. Thank you also to the many others of you who have purchased and read our books, and submitted queries in the past.

Alas, for those of you who would like to send us new submissions... we are taking some time off.

We now have projects planned or under contract to take us to 2015. As a result, and in order to give our editorial staff a well-earned break after two years of continuous reading for our contest and query periods:
- Our open query period for Fall 2012 has been be cancelled.
- We are also taking a one year hiatus from offering the Starcherone Prize competition.
We will not be accepting queries or unsolicited manuscripts until we begin reading for the 10th Starcherone Fiction Prize Competition in October 2013.

Generally, Starcherone Books accepts manuscripts via two methods:
- In October of each year, we begin our ANNUAL CONTEST. This is a blind-judged competition, and it has been won by debut authors every year that we have offered the prize. Among the winners have been Zachary Mason, whose The Lost Books of the Odyssey was later reprinted by Farrar Straus & Giroux and became a New York Times Top 100 Book of the Year in 2010, and Alissa Nutting, who recently had a story from her winning collection, Unclean Jobs for Women & Girls, selected for the next Norton Introduction to Literature, as well as being translated into Chinese and Japanese.
- Following selection of our annual prize winner, we generally offer and open query period, during August and September (cancelled for 2012). Our next open query period is expected to be in August/September of 2013. We apologize for the limited times allotted for reading unsolicited work, but Starcherone Books only publishes an average of 3-4 books/year. In addition, our editors are all volunteers, and several are authors themselves. We are taking a little time off to rest, to renew personal projects, and to concentrate on producing the book projects to which we have committed.

Unsolicited manuscripts submitted prior to the start of our contest in October, 2013, will be returned or discarded.

Again, many thanks to our fans and supporters!

Best Wishes,
Ted Pelton, Publisher
Starcherone Books