FAQ
How do I submit a manuscript to By Chance Books?
Please fill out our submission form. Our editors are looking for high-quality, creative work across a wide range of genres—creative community books, YA and children’s books, literary fiction, and adult nonfiction. We’re less interested in neat categories than we are in powerful ideas, strong voices, and work that feels necessary.
We’re drawn to books made by people with lived experience or real expertise—work that reaches toward the reader, shares hard-earned knowledge, encourages self-empowerment and fairness, and speaks honestly to issues many people are living through right now. If your book builds community, sparks creativity, teaches something useful, or helps people feel less alone, we want to see it.
What we don’t publish:
We don’t accept AI-generated or AI-assisted work. We don’t publish content rooted in hate, exploitation, or harm. And we’re probably not the right home for projects without a clear purpose, point of view, or respect for the reader.
If your work is real, intentional, and made with care, send it our way.
What is your policy on AI-generated content?
We aren’t interested in reading manuscripts that have been generated by AI. We will not publish any story, image, artwork, or other creative content that was generated using anything other than the human brain.
Who is behind By Chance Books?
By Chance Books was founded by Deborah Weisser and Jennifer Lombardo. We’re a small, hands-on operation, supported by a handful of freelancers we trust and, most importantly, our vibrant communities of readers, writers, artists, organizers, and friends who show up and make this work possible.
Our owners are also our staff. We don’t have shareholders, investors, shadow partners, or a parent company looming over us.
We raise money by earning the support of our readers, and we put everything we make back into the organization—so we can publish more books and stay true to our mission of bringing important work to the people who need it.
I want to be involved. How can I help?
Buy a book! You can buy directly from us, from your local bookstore, or find it at the library; if they don’t have the book you want, request a copy so they place an order.
Back our projects! We’ll run Kickstarter campaigns to help raise funds for production costs and to spread the word about our upcoming titles.
Pre-order our books! We’ll always have a link to buy our upcoming titles directly from us well in advance of the anticipated publication date.
Tell your friends about us! We’re little. And being little means we don’t have a lot of cash laying around to spend on promotion like paid ads. You can help tremendously just by spreading the word. Follow our social media accounts and forward our posts to a few friends. Come see us at author events in your area.
Do you work with educators? libraries? large organizations?
Absolutely.
If you’re an educator and you’d like to use one of our titles as a classroom text, contact us for a desk copy to review. We also have educator guides with lesson plans for some of our books, designed for early childhood, middle grade, and young adult readers. For those times when your little learners need a break, we have activity kits with fun projects, coloring sheets and more – great for parties and library events! We also offer discussion guides to enrich your book clubs or your classroom.
If you’re a librarian and you want to carry our books, you can order through your usual channels or directly from us.
If you think your company would benefit from a bulk purchase of any of our titles (local interest or topical books for employee gifts, for example), contact us to learn more.
Can I come and work for you?
Right now, we’ve got a dream team, but we’re always looking for freelance writers, editors, designers, and other publishing specialists to add to our short list of people to tag in on a project-by-project basis. Send us a note at ByChanceBooks@gmail.com if you want to know more.