IMPORTANT NOTE: This series has a uniform design and presentation. Before submitting, please ensure your submission conforms to the guidelines below. We may reject an otherwise worthy manuscript if these guidelines are not followed.

Because this is a series, the cover design is rigid and the title should be [Author Name]: Selected Poems. Examples of our Selected Poems editions are linked from our Catalog. Please include with your submission a short (roughly 2- to 4-page) independently written foreword framing your development and unique contribution as a poet over time with the foreword writer's name and affiliation at the end.

If accepted, your manuscript in all particulars will be produced in-house. Except for obvious errors and to conform to the series design, we will edit lightly (if at all) because the poems have already been vetted by the original book publishers. If any poems in your manuscript substantially deviate from the originally published version, however, please indicate those by placing "[revised]" in the title.

WHAT IS ACCEPTABLE

The title says it all: Selected Poems. Prose poetry relying on skilled use of poetic devices is acceptable. Flash fiction and fictional narratives should not be included, nor should any concrete poetry, shaped poetry, or poems relying on bulleted or columnar text as these are difficult, if not impossible, to reproduce for the Kindle edition. Remove any "words scattered all over the page" poems, because these are very difficult to read, especially in digital formats (like on cellphones) where type size and intended line breaks cannot be controlled. An assessment of potentially problematic formatting is made before a manuscript is cleared for content evaluation, and your submission (no matter how great) may be rejected if there are too many insurmountable issues.

Because fair use standards for poetry are confusing and easily exceeded, we strongly disfavor mishmashes of others' work. If you do include a few, at the time of submission you must provide an itemized Notes section detailing the source of all material quoted and, for each use instance that may possibly be in violation, include written permission for global, indefinite use. If in doubt, we encourage you to search online for fair use guidelines for poetry and don't depend on just one source. Also, if you do not hold the rights to any earlier published work, you must provide written permission from the original publisher for inclusion in the Selected Poems edition.

LENGTH AND FORMATTING

Ideally, we want the final length of books in this series to be 125 to 175 pages (at 6" x 9" trim size), including front matter and acknowledgments. We do not include biographical material, images, or marketing materials (blurbs) inside the book. Author photo, bio, and blurbs, which are placed on the back cover, can be submitted post-acceptance, as can any images you'd like to suggest as cover possibilities (preferably a grouping literally or metaphorically significant to your work as a whole).

For each book represented in the collection, include a section page with the book or chapbook title, followed by the original publisher and year of publication in parentheses. Books should be presented chronologically, in the order they were published.

Start each poem on a new page. It is best to stick to traditional single-spaced lines with one extra line between stanzas. Please do not use the Enter key to "go" to the next page; in most word processing programs, pressing Ctrl-Enter (Windows) or Cmd-Enter (Mac) at the end of the last line of each poem will force a page break and start the next poem on a new page. Please do not center lines or try to center whole poems on the page using tabs or spaces. Do use tabs or groups of five spaces to effect indentations.

Turn on automatic page numbering or put an automatic page number code (along with anything else you want to repeat on every page) in a header or footer. We would rather your manuscript be unnumbered than the numbers manually typed in. Also, please do not add instructions like "continued on next page, no stanza break"; create a new stanza by pressing the Enter key twice and let the pages break as they will. We do not expect your manuscript to be pretty; we do expect it to be cleanly formatted and polished to the best of your ability.

If you do not know how to generate one automatically, you needn't bother including a table of contents. Really.

PLEASE do not type poem titles in all caps. We follow the Chicago Manual of Style for poem titles. (When in doubt, try this online converter.) Titles are best styled as a heading (we use Heading 2, with Heading 1 reserved for section titles) or simply set off in boldface (Ctrl-B Windows, Cmd-B Mac). Other than this, the less styling and formatting you use, the better. If we accept your manuscript, we will completely strip and re-style everything.

If you write with a long line on a letter-sized page, be aware that some lines may wrap down and be indented when the poems are formatted for a 6" x 9" print edition. Try setting your margins at 2" all around and use 12-point type to preview what may happen when the manuscript is reformatted. Sometimes we can compensate for wrapping lines by using narrower margins, a smaller font size, or a condensed typeface, but sometimes we cannot.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A complete list of acknowledgments, including credits to the journals or magazines in which the work was first published, should be submitted with the manuscript. Do not include reprint credits. Combine publications from all volumes of the same journal into one entry and do not include individual issue information. Alphabetize serial publications separately from books, chapbooks, anthologies, installations, recordings, or awards:

A Journal: "Poem 1," "Poem 2," "Poem 3"

"Poem 1," "Poem 2," and "Poem 3" first appeared in Anthology/Book/Chapbook Title (Press, YYYY).

"Poem Title"/Book/Chapbook Title received the [YYYY Award Name].

That's it. If you have any questions about our process, please refer to the Guide.