Microchapbook submissions will be announced as soon as possible.
Nightingale and Sparrow aims to soar through written and visual arts. We want to publish work that takes the earthly and makes it ethereal. Send us your deepest thoughts, most poignant memories, and flights of fancy.
Before you submit: read, read, read!
- Read through the above mission and below guidelines and ensure your work complies.
- Read through the archives of Nightingale & Sparrow, our literary magazine, to get a taste for the kinds of work we especially love.
- Read through your manuscript one more time to check for any last changes or edits.
We highly recommend checking out our previously published microchapbooks, if possible, for a good example of formatting, layouts, and the finished product.
Nightingale & Sparrow Press is looking for microchapbook manuscripts that meet the following criteria:
Genres: While we’re partial to poetry, we’ll certainly consider prose (fiction or CNF) – if you think it’s a good fit and it can be printed in microchap form, send it our way! One larger piece or multiple smaller pieces are acceptable. Our microchapbooks are currently printed using standard printer paper/ink, so visual art doesn’t typically work well, unfortunately.
Page count: 10 to 13 micropages (approximately 2.125 x 2.75 inches)
*Note: Including front and back cover, our hand-crafted microchapbooks contain 16 pages in total. With cover and copyright information, this leaves up to 13 usable pages–please keep in mind any applicable table of contents, acknowledgements for previously published works, or author bio when formatting your manuscript.
Word count: We’re still experimenting with this format, so we’d like to be a bit flexible as we figure things out. As long as we can fit your work on the pages allotted above (while ensuring the text is legible!), we’ll consider it. From our experience so far, we can comfortably fit about six to eight words per line and about ten lines per page, at maximum. We’ve published both horizontal and vertical microchaps to accommodate smaller stanzas and larger lines.
Submit your manuscript (body text only – we’ll get your title pages, acknowledgements, bio, TOC, etc. if your manuscript is selected for publication!) in a document with no identifying information through our submission form.
Please allow us up to two months following the close of submissions to respond to all submitted manuscripts
Feel free to contact our staff with any further questions.
Chosen microchapbooks:
N&S will choose up to six manuscripts to be published following each reading period. We will work with these authors to put the finishing touches on their work and get it formatted ready for publication. Each microchapbook will be scheduled for publication at some point in 2023-2024.
Each author will receive 50% of the profits from their microchapbook and will be welcome to purchase copies from N&S directly at a discounted rate. Our standard print run is 100 copies.
Published microchapbooks will be linked here on our site and available for purchase in our Etsy shop. Particularly for our international readers, we will offer a digital edition of all microchapbooks.
