Creme de la Crime are a breath of fresh air in the crime publishing industry. Unlike most “traditional” publishers Creme de la Crime aim to bring the new writer to the fore.

I shall quote here from their home page blurb

Like many major publishers, we publish imaginative, top-quality crime novels - but there the similarity ends.

Unlike most major publishers, our main goals are:

• to encourage and develop new crime writing talent. We set out to introduce new crime writers to the UK market. Our list includes previously unpublished novelists, and established authors who wanted to switch to crime.
• to provide a platform for writers who want to expand the boundaries of the genre. We encourage our authors to experiment. We welcome crime novels with elements of other genres: erotica, horror or historical, for example, or futurecrime.

So there you are. Plain and simple.

Creme de la Crime does not offer big advances on sales, instead, they offer a generous royalty scheme. you are  always better with long term royalties by the way than a big fat check up fromt.

Why? If you have a couple of thousand in the bank, your temptation is to stop working at your craft, sit back and spend it. Plus, an advance on book sales is just that, an advance. If your book doesn’t selll as much as the publishers risked on an advance, the chances of you getting a repeat deal are  slim to say the least.

Creme de la Crime have certain criteria for accepting a manuscript.

1. it’s got to be good enough to publish. Like every other publisher, they are in it for the money and it’s in their interest to select only the best. If your manuscript is sub-standard, forget it.

“Our standards are extremely high. We are only looking for the cream of new talent, writers with huge ability, and most important, originality. We want our books to be mould-breaking, not retreads of last year’s bestsellers. ”

Your books must be up to the current market.

As i pointed out in another post, your novel must be current. What do the readers in this genre want? What will they want in 6 months time?

I’ll let them explain.

“You’ll have market savvy. You’ll know what readers want now, not 10, 20 or 30 years ago.”

Creme de la crime have a full set of author submission guidelines on their website, the link is at the bottom of this post.

What Creme de la Crime do expect is that you will be a major part of selling your work to your readership. Besides writing being a job that takes up a lot of time, Creme de la crime also recognise that there is more to being a crime writer than just writing.

You must be prepared to go on the road and publicise your work. Typically, this will involve signings, possibly local radio and TV interviews and the like. As they say, you will never have worked so hard.

But that’s what the writing business is all about. Hard work.

What and you thought it was all plain sailing after you’d put the final full stop (period) on your work.

Getting your manuscript accepted by Creme de la Crime.

firstly, your novel needs to be at least three quarters finished. they only ask for the first 1,000 words but they tend to want to see the rest fairly quickly so take note. It is no good writing 10,0000 words and hope Creme de la crime will accept it. Again, see their submission guidelines.

If accepted you will be asigned a personal editor who will oversee any corrections changes or rewrites that they will accept. You will be expected to work closely and co-operate fully to get your work to the best standard for publication.

Creme de la Crime do charge a one off fee for reading a manuscript. This pays for the editors time. Creme de la crime are an independent publisher and as such, cash is tight and if they had to pay readers from book earnings, writers royalties would be affected.

They are quite up front about this and personally I think this is quite a fair policy. 

They also have a list on their authors submission page about subjects they won’t touch and the list is quite comprehensive so check it out before you submit.

 Altogether, I think Creme de la Crime are definitely worth checking out.

Here is the link to their submissions page

 Quick note.

Creme de la Crime DON’T charge a reading fee, but they do charge if you want a professional critique of your work. Compared to some of the prices you’ll get charged for so-called “professional ” critiques, it is worth a small ioutlay to see where your manuscript could be improved.

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