Submission Guidelines

We welcome submissions, and look forward to hearing from you. You can find our areas of interest here. Agencies have different requirements, so please follow our individual guidelines below.

How to Submit Work

Book submissions: please email submissions@sheilland.co.uk
Film, TV & theatre submissions: please email info@sheilland.co.uk – consult their separate guidelines here.

Submit one work at a time. If you have more than one, mention it in your cover letter and send your strongest work. Do not send original artwork or photographs by post. We do not accept submissions that have used AI technology.

We receive a high volume of submissions, and are unfortunately not able to respond to everyone. If you haven’t heard from us within 12 weeks of submitting, we're afraid your submission wasn't for us.

Cover Letter

Write a concise, typed cover letter and include a short synopsis of the work. We'd like to know a bit about you: briefly introduce yourself, including why and how long you have been writing and whether you write in more than one genre or category. For non-fiction, explain why you chose the subject and are suited to write about it.

Synopsis

Fiction: Send a one-page synopsis of the full story, including significant twists, and the ending.
Non-fiction: Send a brief outline of the subject, where it fits in the market, and why you are qualified to write about it.

CV

Send a short CV covering relevant qualifications and any previous publications. A full job application style CV is not necessary.

Chapters

Send the first three chapters, or around 50 pages, typed. Please wait for us to ask before sending the full manuscript.

Additional Requirements

Please use at least 1.5 line spacing, margins, and pagination. Include the actual word count for completed works, or an estimated word count for proposals. For self-published work, state where it is available, how many copies have sold, and which rights or territories remain available.

Final Checks

Before submitting, you may find these videos helpful:

How to get a literary agent – in (almost) five minutes

10 easy ways to put agents off in your submission letter