Submission Guidelines

Bottlecap Press is a publishing company founded in 2014, best known for its poetry chapbooks and full lengths. Their books have been showcased in Dazed, Forbes, New York Magazine, The New York Times, NME, Nylon, Poets & Writers, Vogue, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA PS1, and The Studio Museum in Harlem, among others. Bottlecap authors have performed at Art Basel, SXSW, TED, and more, and have received awards, grants, and critical acclaim.

Manuscript submission guidelines:

Bottlecap Press is currently accepting chapbook submissions for our ongoing multi-genre chapbook series, Bottlecap Features. All genres are welcome, and we're looking for submissions between 12 and 28 pages. Those numbers are strict, but you don't need to worry about counting things like title pages, or acknowledgements pages. In general, for a chapbook project, smaller is better. By its nature, a chapbook is meant to be a fun, ephemeral, low-stakes project — put simply, from Bottlecap's perspective, a chapbook is more like a zine than like a book.

We're looking for poetry, prose, and more. Manuscripts may include individual pieces that have been previously published elsewhere, but we generally can't accept projects that have already been published in their entirety, including self-publishing. Please send submissions in a single file in .doc or .docx format to bottlecappress@gmail.com. Only one submission at a time, please. For a faster response, please include the word "Submission" in the subject line of your email.

You must be 18 years or older to submit. We will not consider submissions from minors, even with parents' permission.

Some things we don't like: violence, hatred, excessive swearing.

Some things we do like: nature, animals, relationships, culture (including pop culture), feelings, identity, experimental lit.

We will not consider any AI-generated writing or art.

Please do not include an epigraph in your submission unless you have already obtained written permission from the originator of the quote or their next of kin. Similarly, do not include photographs or illustrations that don't belong to you, outright — this includes collage.

We also would typically discourage most submissions written under a pen name. Pen names can make it difficult to promote to friends and family, who are often some of the most supportive readers for a chapbook. There are, of course, some exceptions to this rule: for instance, if you have a job that absolutely requires online privacy, like a primary school teacher, or if more people already know you by your pen name than by your name. It is, however, absolutely okay if you go by a name other than your legal name in real life — we can use that.

Please include a bio with your submission.

We are not currently accepting new submissions from authors outside the United States.