Hello all. I work for Long Barn Books, a small publishing company run by novelist Susan Hill. You may have heard that around this time last year, we asked for first-time novelists to submit the first few chapters of their book for consideration, and we chose a fantastic novel by Helen Slavin, called The Extra Large Medium, which we are about to publish next week. Orders are already piling up, we're reprinting already, the US and Australian rights have been sold and it's going to be part of the Waterstone's summer 3 for 2 promotion.

We're now on the search for a novel for 2007. Full details, rules etc are here: http://www.longbarnbooks.com/latest_news.htm

So please do send in your novels - it is a fantastic opportunity.

I do hope this is the right place to put this, as you can see this is my first post, so please be gentle if I've got it wrong...

Thanks for posting this, Jess.

Novels 'aren't eligible if currently being considered by a publisher'...does this mean it's okay if you're still waiting to hear from AGENTS??

Sammy

Thanks for that- also interested to know if agent interest makes this a no no?

Thanks for this, Jess.

Cheers,

Nik.

Have I missed something - it doesn't seem to exclude any particular genre. Does this mean that anything goes? I'm assuming it is okay for kids' books?

S

Thanks I'll give it a go.
Sarah

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Oh wait a second, it says you have to be a resident in the UK! is that final?

Just jumping in, SarahT, because I happened to email Susan Hill about this and here's what she said:

in terms of the novel submission. It`s fairly straightforward.
1. No science fiction
2. No Romance - as in Mills and Boon
3. Not a children`s or teenage novel or what is known as crossover fiction - which is a genre supposed to straddle young people/adult..
and - that`s it. Last year we had a huge number of very very different submissions. The winner is published on May 9th so you could read it - or not. It doesn`t mean this year`s novel would be like that in any way at all but it would give you a good idea of the standard required.


So, no kids' books, I'm afraid. By the way, I've just finished reading the 2005 winning book and it's great - highly recommended!

Hi,
tiger_bright has hit the nail on the head I'm afraid regarding children's/teen books - apologies for any confusion, this info should be on the site asap. I think 'no science fiction' also includes fantasy, as well.

I'm afraid the UK resident clause is final, yes.

It's fine if you're waiting to hear from agents in terms of them potentially taking you on - what isn't ok is if an agent has your novel in with other publishers. This is just because we got burnt twice last year with projects that we expressed a serious interest in, only for it to fall through because the agent was playing one off against the other...Rest assured that we do get back to people pretty quickly though, so if it's not right for us, you won't be left dangling for months on end...

tiger_bright - glad to hear you're enjoying The Extra Large Medium - I've just got back from accompanying the author to a talk she did at the Swindon Literary Festival which went very weel, so it's all very exciting.

And thanks for the friendly welcome...

It was a great book, Jess and the author deserves every success. I was especially impressed with the twists at the end and the bittersweet/tender close which was almost unexpected. Oh and I hope to submit my novel for the next round! (Is it possible you could shed some light on why you specify no synopsis with the sample chapters? That intrigued me purely because I've never come across it before).

tiger_bright, it's purely because we don't feel they're usually necessary - we read the initial chapters and can tell from that whether the quality of the writing is such that we want to read more. If we do, we call the rest in, if we don't, no synopsis will get us to do so...

Having said that - if you have a synopsis and want to send it in with the chapters, there's no rule against it...

Thanks for clarifying the 'no children's books' thing - although it wasn't what I wanted to hear! I was hoping for another competition like the Waterstones WOW one last year, which I was ineligible to enter, alas!

S

Sorry SarahT - we are a teeny tiny publisher, and this has to be a specific adult fiction thing, as we just don't have the resources to open it to all the other permutations, at this stage.

Nevermind. I'll have to keep looking elsewhere. And in the meantime, best of wishes to anybody entering the Long Barn Competition. It looks a fabulous opportunity.

S

Jess, thanks for making contact with the group. You're right, it's a great opportunity and Susan Hill and her team should take a bow.

Best wishes

Jim

Just to whet appetites, Jess and Susan Hill will be giving us a WriteWords interview, so keep an eye out for that.