eBook and Traditional Publishing

Spectacle Publishing Media Group, LLC

Monthly Archives: August 2011

September Fiction Contest!

While our diligent editors devote hour after hour to the completion of On The Brink…Volume 1, working through threat of hurricane and earthquake (literally), we can’t forget about Volume II. We’re taking submissions for OTB Volume II , with the same sweet prize: $100.00

Same rules as before, except with a positive spin this time. Come on, we know you’ve got a warm and fuzzy in your head, somewhere. We’re seeking original fiction or creative non-fiction tales about “life changing events” for the better. The collection is entitled “On The Brink… Volume II”

  • 2,500-5,000 words
  • character driven stories
  • all genres

This contest continues until the 15th of September. There is NO submission fee. Submission fees go against everything we believe in.

 

Send your stories with a brief introduction to Submissions@spectaclepmg.com. Please be aware that by submitting your stories to SPMG you are granting consent for those materials to be published. All stories will be considered for the contest, but only the best ones be published. Click here for more information about publishing with SPMG.

 

Spectacle Publishing is always looking for novels as well. So if you’ve got a winner, send us a query. Remember, short fiction contest submissions to not require a query and can be emailed here. Full manuscripts require a query first. Click here for more info.

Feeling Jolly? Pass it around!

Spectacle Publishing wants your warm and fuzzy holiday heroes and heroines! Got a book about the best Christmas ever? Have you crafted a heart-warming tale of inspiration and cheer? Maybe you’ve got a wild ride about your best (worst) New Years resolution? Lets have it!

What we’re looking for specifically:

  • Full length novels (70,000 words or more)
  • Holiday themed, positive, uplifting, human experience
  • Character driven plots
  • No clichés (unless they are damn clever)

Send us only your very best work. We want to publish your work, but we also want it to be successful. Our editors take great pains to make sure your work gets a fair review. If they like your work, they work with you, becoming a creative partner, getting your work in the possible shape for success. Besides, think of what we went through to kid-nap a truckload of elves with mad editing skill. What are you waiting for? The Query Elf lives here.

Short Story Competition Winner

Excerpt from:
“The Dove”

by Laekan Kemp

 

It’s dark.  A car passes by, the first one in hours.  It throws light against the truck and slides it between the steel hinges and the door.  In that second it highlights my crouching frame and reflects the shadows of the crate’s bars against my skin.  I feel a faint wave of air brush my ankle, someone fanning out their skirt.  There’s a soft knocking towards the mouth of the truck like fingernails tapping against one of the metal walls.  I feel the heat of moist eyes against my cheekbone and I pair them with a stifled panting coming from the crate facing mine.  I hold my breath and listen to the other bodies in the truck, absorbing the cold, the quiet.

To read more, check out our book here.

Copyright Notice:

This story is cannot be reprinted without permission from Spectacle Publishing Media Group, LLC.

And the winner is…

On The Brink... Volume IWe know you’ve all been waiting with baited breath for tonight. Well, we have too. We’ve received many great entries into our “grand opening” fiction contest. Good stuff running the gamut of genres. Our editors have been pouring over the ever growing stack of entries. They’ve been wrangling and debating, applying archaic and esoteric formulae to find the perfect story, the single finest gem in a dragon’s treasure trove of stories.

Rest assured after weeks of due diligence and vetting, we finally chose the one the stands out as excellent fiction writing. Before we do the big reveal – alright, you caught us. We’re just screwing around. Here it is, right now:

The winner of the Spectacle Publishing Media Group Fiction for “On The Brink… Volume I” is Laekan Kemp!

Congratulations Laekan Kemp! Your story “The Dove” has earned you the featured author spot in “On The Brink… Volume I” and $100.00! You’ll be hearing from us soon. Thank you for your submission! Come on everyone; let’s hear some props for Laekan!

To all of the writers who took the time to submit their work to our first anthology, thank you! We had a hellish time selecting the best. In fact, there were two first fights and one of our editors is… missing. Congratulations to all the authors included in our first publication. Those other writers who have been selected for the anthology will be contacted soon as well.

Also, Spectacle Publishing would like to thank Dana O’Shea who provided us with some stellar photography for our first book cover. Check her photographs out and learn more at http://www.flickr.com/photos/37982364@N02/.

Thank you all so much. Please keep sending us your very best work and stay tuned for On The Brink… Volume I in eBook and print format!

 

 

Scare us (if you can)!

Spectacle Publishing is looking for some terrifying fiction to publish for Halloween. Give us your best monster stories; urban fantasy, terror, horror, vampires, ghosts, goblins, spiders, bats, werewolves and high-school teachers with long black fingernails and that thing growing on their noses!

What we’re looking for specifically:

  • Full length novels (70,000 words or more)
  • Horror/Monster fiction
  • Character driven, immersive settings with fresh plots
  • No clichés (unless they are damn clever)

Send us only your very best work. We want to publish your work, but we also want it to be successful. Our editors take great pains to make sure your work gets a fair review. If they like your work, they work with you, becoming a creative partner, getting your work in the possible shape for success. Don’t be afraid. Really. What are you waiting for? The Query Monster lives here.

More Fiction!

Hungry for fiction!You guessed it. We’re hungry for fiction! Spectacle Publishing is expanding and looking for full length manuscripts to publish. You’ve got one. We know you do. Polish it up and in the meantime send us a query!

What we’re looking for specifically:

  • Full length novels (70,000 words or more)
  • Any Genre (but Halloween and Holiday books would be nice too!)
  • Original, character driven stories in compelling settings. Stories that make you think.
  • No clichés (unless they are damn clever)

Remember:

  • Spell-check your work!
  • Take the time to read it over before you send it.
  • Send us only your very best work. We want to publish your work, but we also want it to be successful. Our editors take great pains to make sure your work gets a fair review. If they like your work, they work with you, becoming a creative partner, getting your work in the best possible shape for success.

Poetry! As Told by… Robots?

Robots are usually prized for their superhuman dexterity and mathematical computational abilities.

That’s nice, but did you know they could dance?

 

There’s a pesky little robot who’s been dancing around my sketchbooks for years. He’s a tenacious little fellow who enjoys roller coaster rides and hot dogs. One day he popped into my blog, where I’ve been voraciously posting for years. He looked at me and said, “hey, can I do this?”

Of course, I told him no.

However, I promised to let him borrow some of my best poems for a book of his own. He brought all of his friends and nestled into the pages.

I haven’t seen him since.

Be sure to keep a lookout for him, and remind him to send me postcards every once in a while.

And don’t worry. No robots were harmed in the making of this book:

Why can’t I just publish it myself?

Of course! But at Spectacle, our philosophy is that writers should write. When you self-publish you’ll become your own agent, your own PR specialist, your own marketing team and sometimes even your own graphic designer. We figure you’d rather be writing.

At Spectacle, we take all our submissions very seriously. There’s no such thing as a “slush pile” here. No matter what your skill level, we evaluate your manuscript and get back to with a personal note. If we think your piece is really good, we’ll work with you to get it into shape. You want your best work to be out there, to be read and experienced as you meant it to be. A free round of editing is worth it, right?

I’ve published books on my own. I know the temptation. Just spell check it and submit it to Amazon/B&N/Whoever. Well, that’s the idea but it never seemed to work like that. The formatting for eBooks is actually a little complicated. This goes back to professionalism – we all want to look like we know what we’re doing.

After publishing the books, I posted on Facebook, my blog, a few other places and I saw some sales. Then, with nothing new to say, they became buried in the lists of other self-published eBooks.

Don’t get me wrong eBooks are the future. But the traditional publishing industry has given up on editing and personal feedback. Editors don’t edit – they select what is salable. At Spectacle, we actually edit. Trust me, editing is a good thing. Even the best of us tends to get to close to out work, to not see the holes in the plot or the pacing issues. Sometimes a beautifully poignant scene, written as if the muse Calliope herself had channeled through the author takes place in a sensory void – destroying the dream. The author knows the place, but the audience doesn’t. That’s where a good editor comes in.
Many authors find that they simply don’t have the time or expertise to effectively market their work. We provide each of our novel authors with a comprehensive marketing package, compiled by professional Internet marketers. Take advantage of that!