Sunbury Press has been publishing books since 2004. We are a rapidly growing traditional publisher in a wide range of categories. We typically receive about 2000 proposals a year, selecting only 100 of them for publication (about 5%). We choose to invest only in those opportunities that we feel have the best chance in the marketplace.
Please read carefully!
We publish our books under twenty category or region-focused imprints.
Going forward, at least 60% of our titles will be nonfiction (NF). Following are the imprints for which we are currently seeking manuscripts.
Nonfiction
1. Sunbury Press is our primary nonfiction imprint. The Sunbury Press imprint is best known for history, military fiction, biography, memoir, and other nonfiction categories.
2. Local History Press is our local and regional history imprint.
3. Radio Free Press is our political imprint.
4. Hearth and Home Press features books of a more practical nature, including Crafts and Hobbies, Cooking, Personal/Practical/Emergency Preparedness, Games and Activities, House and Home, Sustainable Living, Homesteading, and Gardening.
5. Distelfink Press is our Pennsylvania Dutch / Pennsylvania German culture imprint.
6. Oxford Southern is for academic, medical, biographical, social science, and educational content.
7. Black Suit Press is for books about UK culture, history, and related topics.
Nonfiction / Fiction
1. Catamount Press imprint focuses on literature and creative nonfiction related to the Northern Appalachia region.
2. Champlain Press imprint focuses on literature and creative nonfiction related to the Lake Champlain (Adirondacks, Green Mountains, New England region).
3. Lucky Shoe Press imprint focuses on literature and creative nonfiction related to the Southern Appalachia region.
4. Brown Posey Press is our literary fiction and creative nonfiction imprint. We also publish our art and music titles under this imprint.
5. Scriptoria Press is our new Christian nonfiction and fiction imprint.
6. Roswell Press is our new paranormal, alien, UFO, supernatural, cryptics, occultism, sci-fi, and strange phenomenon nonfiction and fiction imprint.
7. Ars Metaphysica is our spiritual, metaphysical, new age, fiction, and religion (except Christian) nonfiction imprint.
8. Verboten Books is our imprint for mature and dark humor fiction and grittier nonfiction topics.
Fiction
1. Milford House Press is our general fiction imprint, including historical and legal fiction, and including cozy mysteries and westerns.
2. Hellbender Books is our horror, psychological thrillers, dystopian (except YA), and fantasy imprint.
3. The Agency Books is our new detective, government conspiracies, law enforcement, espionage, terrorism, FBI/CIA/NSA, and spy thriller imprint.
4. Loch Ness Books is our Young Adult (YA) imprint.
Children's
1. Speckled Egg Press is our general children's imprint for illustrated books for children in elementary school or younger. We will only consider authors who are already working with illustrators.
Please DO NOT MAIL HARD COPY to us. We prefer electronic submissions.Please do not call us about your proposal. We ask that you please leave our phone lines open for our ordering customers. You may follow the progress of your proposal via this submission site. The review process can be up to 18 months, depending on the category, the number of open submissions, and our needs. During this time you are welcome to submit your proposals to other publishers.
Please read carefully.
Sunbury Press, Inc. publishes books in a variety of categories and via twenty different imprints. We will determine which imprint to assign based on categories and other factors. Please use this form for all categories and imprints.
Submission Requirements
- We are only interested in hearing from you after your manuscript is complete.
- Be sure to complete the entire submission form.
- Be sure to include your author biography or CV.
- At this stage, please submit at least 3 chapters from your manuscript.
- If illustrations or photos are to be included, please include samples.
- We can only accept attachments in the following formats: PDF, Word, or ODT.
- REMEMBER to follow ALL form instructions (located next to the entry fields). If instructions are not followed, the proposal will be rejected. PLEASE read and follow ALL instructions.
Ambition in the Mountains: Northern Appalachia and the Making of the Gilded Age
Catamount Press seeks creative nonfiction essays for its forthcoming anthology, Ambition in the Mountains: Northern Appalachia and the Making of the Gilded Age.
The Gilded Age is often remembered as a national story of railroads, oil, steel, industrial fortunes, political corruption, and vast inequality. But much of that story was made in the mountains.
Across Northern Appalachia, industry tore through the land, taking timber, oil, and coal. It extracted wealth from the ground and labor from our people, including immigrants who came with dreams and ambition. This was a region of opportunity and exploitation, industrial promise and environmental harm, freedom-seeking and racial violence, ambition and corruption.
During this era, the American Dream often became a gilded promise while many built inland empires. Northern Appalachia coal and steel fueled expansion, as countless thousands rode wagons, rails, and rivers to the West.
This anthology will focus on the arc of the Gilded Age, 1840–1900, across the northern and north central Appalachian counties of Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland, and New York, as designated by the Appalachian Regional Commission. We are looking for essays that treat Northern Appalachia as central to the making of industrial America and reflect the complicated tensions and frictions the region experienced as a result.
We welcome work rooted in places such as Pittsburgh, Johnstown, Oil City, Titusville, Johnstown, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, Williamsport, Bramwell, Elkins, Morgantown, Parkersburg, Wheeling, Frostburg, Harpers Ferry, Cumberland, Marietta, Steubenville, Youngstown, Jamestown, Orlean, Corning, the New York Southern Tier, and more.
Possible subjects include oil booms and busts, coal mining, coke production, steel and iron, logging, tanneries, railroads, canals, distilling, livestock and agrarian economies, immigrant labor, family life, environmental damage, muckraking and yellow journalism, the Civil War, divided loyalties, slavery in border communities, freedom-seekers, emancipation, and the Underground Railroad.
We are not seeking academic essays or historical fiction. We want creative nonfiction grounded in fact and with attention to narrative, lyricism, scene, image, research, and voice. We seek work that can hold the contradictions of an era that built and broke northern Appalachia.
Submission Guidelines:
- Creative nonfiction essays of 750–3,000 words
- Please use Garamond, size 12 font, and double-space the submission
- Include a 50-word biography in your cover letter
- Include a brief source note for historical material
- Submission deadline: September 30, 2026
- Do not submit works generated in whole or in part by AI. Editing tools like Grammarly, ProWriting Aid, and PerfectIt are the only acceptable uses of AI. Generative uses are not welcome for this call.