Traditional Publishing

Manuscript submission

Silverfish Books (Malaysia)

Guidelines for submission of manuscripts for publication

We accept manuscript submissions, but we have a few criteria that we ask you to follow. These guidelines to help you put your proposal together and include all the information you need for it to be considered properly.

First, we encourage you to know your publisher before you submit. Please take some time to review the types of books on our website or in bookshops to give you an idea of what we do. Silverfish Books mission is to publish books by Malaysians, for Malaysians, about Malaysians. Manuscripts satisfying all three criteria, will have the best change of approval, but other works will also be looked at on merit.

 

Children's Manuscript Submissions

Currently, we do not accept children's book manuscripts. Please look for a suitable publisher for that.

 

Adult Manuscript Submissions

We only accept submissions by email attachments in MS Word format.

Do not send your manuscript on a disk or as a hard copy as it will not be considered.

Manuscripts that we accept:

  • fiction, science fiction, fantasy, thrillers

  • popular non-fiction, politics, history, biography, travel narrative, popular culture,memoirs

  • Short story collection or anthologies 

Manuscripts we do not accept:

  • poetry

  • educational/academic material

  • parenting, health, mind body and spirit, business and self-help, cooking, lifestyle, leadership, motivation, religion.

  • individual short stories, unless specifically solicited.

  • any writing that incites hate, ot likely to incite hate

  • writing of pornographic nature.

     

What to submit

We only accept submissions of complete manuscripts (not proposals). Here is a list of the information we require so that we can review your submission .

1. A brief bio of the author with

  • a little about yourself

  • how you came to write the book

  • your target readers

  • your contact details

2. A one-page synopsis of your book

  • Keep it short, direct and straight to the core of what your manuscript.

3. A Sample of your work

  • The first few chapters of your work of at least 20 pages

 

The address for submissions is: publisher@silverfishbooks.com

 

Our response time

We try to read all submissions as soon as we can, but sometimes due to the volume of submissions it could take three to four weeks for an assessment. We will acknowledge receipt of your submission immediately though, so if you do not hear from us for a few days, please contact us. 

A positive response

With our positive response you will be told how to submit your full manuscript. All accepted manuscripts will be edited and critiqued. Authors can expect to rewrite their work several times depending the quality of the work. A well written and edited work may require only minimal rewrites. But we also accept works which show promise, but are far from ready for publication. Rewrites for these may be extensive.

We will recommend changes based on our discussions with you (in person or through emails) to ensure factual correctness, consistency, structural integrity, pace, internal logic, and language. We like manuscripts that are lean and tight, without excessive padding. At Silverfish Books, we insist that every book matters, and it is imperative that it be the best the author can produce at that point.

However, if you are reluctant to rework your manuscript with our editors, or have strong objections to changing anything in it, please look for another publisher.