A little over a year ago, we launched our Lost/Found, our new imprint dedicated to republishing beloved books from small presses that have ceased production. We were unbelievably fortunate to publish Brooke Shaffner's Country of Under as our first-ever L/F title!
Now, we are BACK with our first open call for additions to the Lost/Found catalog! That's right! Do you have a previously published prose book in need of a new home? Does your book dismantle boundaries and force us to reconsider what we think we know? Does your book push the limits of experimentation and dive into the unknown?
If so, we'd love to consider your book for republication under our Lost/Found imprint! We want to see the dark and the light side of the moon—or we want to see it obliterated. Since 2014, SLP has been honored to publish innovative and culturally relevant books. And with the recent addition of our Lost/Found imprint, we would be honored to give your book a new home and thrilled to welcome you into the SLP family.
We don't just want to republish your book -- we want to reintroduce it to the world, with a twist! A hallmark of the Lost/Found imprint is our out-of-the-box foreword pairings. Whether it's your sixth-grade English teacher, the barista who made your latte every Saturday during the months you spent writing, or your relative who bought 30 copies and gave them out as holiday gifts (we love supportive friends/family!), we'll be working with you to find someone who'll write an introduction to celebrate the republication of your book.
On to the nitty-gritty!
- For our Lost/Found imprint, we are looking for previously published fiction, nonfiction, or hybrid books that fit our mission and are currently out of print. If you're looking for a home for a new or unpublished manuscript, please submit during the appropriate reading period. (View our annual schedule here.)
- While we welcome experimentation in every sense of the word, we do not consider poetry; we are a prose-only press. Additionally, we are not able to consider self-published books.
- Potential authors must hold all rights to their manuscript and must have formally terminated the contract with their original publisher to be considered.
- This open call will remain open until we reach our submission cap or until we've taken on as many titles as we can sustainably republish.
- We want to take our time reviewing your books with the attention and care they deserve, so no need to query about the status of your submission. We'll be certain to inform you when we've made our decision. In the meantime, feel free to submit your book elsewhere for republication and let us know if it's found a home with another press.
To be considered for the Lost/Found imprint, please include the following in your submission:
1. the files for your published book (.doc or .docx preferred, but a .pdf is fine as well)
2. proof of your contract termination/confirmation that you hold all rights to your book
3. any relevant information about the press where your work was originally published
Please understand that we need this information up-front in order to sustainably run the imprint and avoid potential miscommunication down the road.
Because we're committed to compensating readers and editors for their work, we're charging a small submission fee for this open call, immediately redeemable toward free shipping on any SLP book. If our reading fee is prohibitive, please email splitlipthepress@gmail.com to receive a manuscript fee waiver, no questions asked.
At Split/Lip, we know firsthand how much labor and love goes into the process of writing and publishing books. The Lost/Found imprint is Split/Lip's small way of giving beloved books a second life and celebrating the legacy of the press who first published them, while offering new generations of readers the chance to discover (and rediscover) old stories. The Split/Lip team sincerely appreciates the resilience of every author who's committed to sharing their stories with the world, and we can't wait to read your work!
Manuscript call
We are currently looking for previously unpublished essay collections, memoirs, and nonfiction/hybrid full-length book manuscripts. Individually published pieces within the manuscript are absolutely fine (and expected!) but the book should not have been published as a book before. We won't define "full-length" (our only hard limit is the lower end: minimum of 125pg), but 150-250 pages tends to be the sweet spot.
We love manuscripts that question boundaries (physical, emotional, metaphysical, meta-emotional—you get the gist). Dazzle us with your version(s) of truth! When it comes to genre-based boundary bending for this reading call, we'd love to see imaginative essays, lyric essaying, formal and layout-based experimentation, etc. Please note, however, that this reading team is looking for nonfiction (and mostly-nonfiction) manuscripts. If your project is more genre-inclusive in its hybridity, it may not be the best fit for this submission call and may be a better fit for our Multigenre + Open Prose Chapbook reading period (April to June), which is also where we'd direct any nonfiction book manuscripts under 125pg.
Historically under-represented perspectives are WELCOME and ENCOURAGED and HIGHLY SOUGHT—we want to help bring your voice to the world!
To get an idea of what we love, please check out our current full-length nonfiction books. We'd love it if you'd add a copy of any (/all) of our books to your submission, and we'll happily throw in free shipping as a thanks (US only, apologies to our international community)!
- Aubrey Hirsch's graphic collection Graphic Rage
- jade vine's essay collection Hold Me
- Sean Enfield's essay collection Holy American Burnout!
- Sarah Fawn Montgomery's essay collection Halfway from Home
- Esteban Rodriguez's essay collection Before the Earth Devours Us
- Jeannine Ouellette's memoir-in-essays The Part That Burns
- Athena Dixon's essay collection The Incredible Shrinking Woman
- Melissa Matthewson's memoir-in-essays Tracing the Desire Line
- Melissa Wiley's essay collection Antlers in Space and Other Common Phenomena.
Our press mission
We publish boundary-breaking fiction, nonfiction, and hybrid books, lifting the transition boards that prevent fluidity and smashing those we cannot pry up. We love work that questions the concept of truth, and work that reinterprets what we think we know. We prize experimentation (physical, emotional, metaphysical, meta-emotional); we welcome the unanswerable. We want to see the dark and the light side of the moon—or we want to see it obliterated. If your book is a wedge in a crack, Split/Lip Press is the hammer helping you split the wall apart.
However, Split/Lip Press does not tolerate manuscripts celebrating racist, homophobic, or misogynistic perspectives, and we will discard such manuscripts unread. We believe in breaking boundaries at Split/Lip, but we will not assist agendas of hate.
Submissions reading fee info
The submission reading fee helps cover our costs as a press, and our nonfiction reading team will be splitting 25% of the submission fees collected during this reading period as compensation for their hard work. But we don't want a fee to keep us from finding the best work out there. If you can't afford the reading fee, please send an email to splitlipthepress@gmail.com before submitting to receive a manuscript fee waiver, no questions asked.
We hope to find the next nonfiction addition to our press catalog during this reading period! That said, our press mission is paramount, and if we are unable to acquire a book from this period that fits, the remainder of the proceeds from this period's reading fees (after paying the readers) will be applied toward submission fee waivers for the next nonfiction reading period.
Basic formatting details
Times New Roman 12 (or similar), double-spaced (unless you are specifically using special formatting—which we'd love to see), and PLEASE remove your name from the manuscript and file name—our readers want to review your manuscripts without names attached. There is a box on the submission form where, if you choose, you may indicate any information about positionality which may be helpful for the readers to know.
Please note that while we love and welcome work which includes images/diagrams/etc, all images may need to appear in black-and-white within a 6" x 9" printed book, so please keep that in mind when submitting.
Hugs + thanks
We work closely with our authors on all elements of their book, from design to promotion. We are engaged in the literary community, and as writers ourselves, we know how important it is to have a book that you love that is supported by a press that loves you. We'd love for you to be part of the Split/Lip Press family.
Simultaneous submissions are obviously welcome. Our reading process is a process and we move quickly and efficiently, but we also don't interrupt it prematurely. So if another publisher snags you first, we just ask that you withdraw your submission (and congrats to you!).
We intend to reply to all submissions by March 15, 2026, so please do not query about the status of your manuscript before that date. If you haven't seen anything from us by 3/15/26, check your status in Submittable and double-check your email spam filter because Submittable's messages sometimes get stuck there—we will definitely respond!
Thank you for considering Split/Lip Press as the home for your book!