Getting published by one of the big five publishers (Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster) might seem impossible without an agent, but it is not.

Most of these publishers have an imprint that accepts unsolicited submissions or queries. These imprints are sometimes very specific in terms of what genre they publish, others are very broad.

Some are print and many are digital-first. In most cases, digital-first  means they publish an eBook version. If it does well, they follow it up with a traditional print run.

I have removed from this list any digital-first imprint of a top five publisher that has been closed to direct submissions for over a year. They may re-open to submissions at some point, but it seems increasingly unlikely. I think the big five went into digital-first under-prepared, as most of the imprints appeared not to have made it. Read More