Agent Submissions
Harpeth Road is about innovation and forward movement in publishing. We’re looking for leaders who share our creative, team-centered approach.
We want to take established authors farther as well as build new writers into authors. To do that, we’re looking for people who are willing to roll up their sleeves, learn and implement best practices, and work with us as a team to build their author platforms and produce excellent writing. We will need authors to be prepared for what it takes to get their book out there and appeal to readers. But we’ll arm them with everything they’ll need: lessons on topics such as author brand, professional headshots, bio, social media, and editing to name a few.
What are we looking for?
Harpeth Road is a publisher of women’s fiction, contemporary romance, historical romance, and southern fiction. Our books all contain a love story, a strong conflict between the main characters, and an emotionally satisfying ending. We’re specifically looking for novels with light sensuality.
The main characters in our books are either strong characters or they find their strength along the way. These characters all have an arc—a learning curve—as they move through the pages, and there is a central conflict keeping our couples apart that, preferably, spans both internal and external conflicts.
Our settings are captivating, interesting locations that make the reader want to dive in and stay a while. They can be small-town and rural to lavish and upscale.
Our Overarching Goal:
Even though we’re small, we want to compete in quality with the best. With strong author education and top-notch editing, we will strive to take the author and his/her story as far as we can.
Pitches:
Pitches should be for finished manuscripts, ranging between 65,000 and 85,000 words in length. (If they’re a little under or over, we’ll still take a look.) We’re looking for authors who are open to edits and willing to work hand-in-hand with us to create their platforms and produce jaw-dropping stories.
What will our authors get?
As a boutique publisher, we are incredibly selective with what we publish. We are currently looking for mainstream romantic fiction from authors with a social media presence. When we do find stories that we love, the authors are just as important to us as their words. We will walk each author through the publishing process, teaching them best practices along the way.
Every author will receive a production schedule that details every step of the process up to publication.
Each author will receive one-on-one synopsis/manuscript feedback conversations for every title.
They will get top-notch editing with industry heavyweights. We want to produce highly polished stories, so every manuscript will have a developmental/structural edit, a line edit, a copyedit, and a proofread by industry leaders before the book goes to market.
All HR authors will have exclusive access to our Author Portal, where they will have everything they need for the entire publishing process at their fingertips.
Every author will receive author education lessons on best practices so they can do what it takes to make the book a success. We teach them best practices in subjects such as author websites, social media presence and etiquette, and how to maximize sites like Author Central and Goodreads to name a few.
We provide all our authors with marketing ideas, info about blog tours and launch schedule.