Learn More About Us

Dreamspinner Press is an international full-service publisher of gay romance based in the United States of America. We publish stories from 3,500 words and up in several genre categories and eBook formats, as well as audiobooks and translations in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, and Hungarian. Novels of 60,000 words+ are published simultaneously in paperback. Since its founding in 2007, Dreamspinner has built a catalog of more than 3,000 titles written by more than 500 authors from six continents. The press now operates three imprints: Dreamspinner Press, specializing in gay romance; Harmony Ink Press, devoted to LGBTQ+ Teen and New Adult fiction; and DSP Publications, a boutique publisher of specialty genre fiction. Dreamspinnerpress.com has almost 30,000 registered users.

  • We believe in growing in small sustainable steps and attribute our success to careful planning and a commitment to quality.
  • We do our best to provide every customer and every author the best experience possible.
  • We approach submissions selection with the goal to balance growth and demand with choosing the quality stories we think a varied audience will appreciate.

Dreamspinner Press is a full-service publisher. Authors do not pay for our services. We are a member of the Independent Book Publishers Association and Association of American Publishers Inc.

  • Contracted manuscripts work through a 20+ week editorial production process coordinated by a senior editor.
  • Specialized content editing for historicals and other genres is available.
  • All cover art is unique to the book and designed by an artist based on the author’s input
  • We provide marketing and distribution services for every title we contract.

For more information, contact@dreamspinnerpress.com

ART

We serve authors of all three imprints through facilitating the creation of unique cover art designed by an artist based on the author’s input. The department works with a roster of nearly forty independent artists with skills in a wide variety of creative styles, including photographic and illustrative imagery. At any one time, more than fifty projects are under way. We maintains Cover Art Sample packages themed appropriately for each imprint. Authors are provided with this package and a questionnaire as a part of starting cover art creation.

DISTRIBUTION

  • All online retailers (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple, Audible, OmniLit, Sony, Diesel Books)
  • More than fifty independent bookstores that we supply directly
  • All physical bookstores through Baker & Taylor in North America, Gardners Books in the UK, Ingram in Europe, and Bulldog Books in Australia.

EDITORIAL

Our editorial philosophy considers your story holistically: both as a whole and as its pieces. We evaluate and direct work based on macro, structural, and copy editing needs. We consider the production of your book to be a team effort, and we want you to be involved every step of the way. Authors are provided with an Editorial Production Guide that walks them through the complete editorial process step-by-step.

We edit with three goals in mind:

  • To help the author tell the story.
  • To help the author strengthen and refine the story.
  • To help the author present as technically clean a story as possible.

MARKETING

A full-time Marketing Director manages a staff serving all imprints that markets and promotes new releases. We also support authors in promotion of their publication, including the services of a review coordinator and a social media coordinator. Public presence among the three imprints includes individual web sites, Facebook pages, Instagram, Twitter accounts, Yahoo!Groups, blogs, and newsletters.

TRANSLATIONS

Dreamspinner launched its in-house Translations Department in October 2011 with translators in French, German, Italian, and Spanish. Since then we have started more than five hundred projects from the Dreamspinner Press catalog. Foreign rights sublicensing information is available by mailing elizabeth@dreamspinnerpress.com

PUBLIC PRESENCE

  • American Library Association (ALA) annual and mid-year meetings
  • BookExpo America (BEA)
  • Frankfurt (Germany) Buchmesse
  • GayRomLit
  • LoveLetter Convention (Germany)
  • Romantic Times RT Booklovers Convention
  • Salon du Livre Paris (France) Book Fair
  • UK GLBTQ Fiction Meet
  • Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA)

GIVING BACK

Dreamspinner Press supports the LGBT community through sponsorship of events such as the Rainbow Book Fair in New York and a number of local Pride festivals. Dreamspinner has contributed a portion of profits from its titles to organizations such as the Family Equity Council; COLAGE; It Gets Better Project; Service Members Legal Defense Network; the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center of New York City; Lambda Legal; Mass Equality; and the Trevor Project.


HOW IT ALL STARTED

The story behind Dreamspinner starts in Summer 2006. Elizabeth officiated her brother-in-law’s wedding to the man of his dreams. Later that weekend, she happened upon her brother-in-law reading a Harlequin romance while lounging next to the pool. Obviously, there was something wrong with that picture. When Elizabeth asked, his reply was simple: “They don’t write romances for people like me.” He’d been through the struggles and dark times, and he’d emerged on the other side to live happily ever after. He wanted to read those stories. Elizabeth’s first thought was that he couldn’t be right—there had to be gay romance out there somewhere. But her Internet searches didn’t turn up very much, only a handful of publishers and very little of the work was remotely romantic. Soon after, while visiting with a group of close friends, she made the offhand comment that someone should start a publishing company that specialized in gay romantic fiction, focusing on treating the authors well and producing quality books that felt good to hold. A group of eight—the founders—stayed up most of the night brainstorming what an ideal company would look like. Those ideas birthed Dreamspinner Press. The name came from the idea and then goal of making authors’ dreams come true.

Dreamspinner was officially founded in December 2006 by Elizabeth North, supported by that original group of friends who donated their time, funds, skills, and/or writing to help launch the press. Seven of the eight company founders are still involved in the day-to-day management and operation of the press: Elizabeth North, Executive Director; Lynn West, Editor in Chief; Connie Bailey, Executive Assistant; Julianne Bentley, Editorial Coordinator; Mara McKennen, Art Director; Anne Regan, Executive Editor; and Ariel Tachna, Translations Coordinator. The founders consider themselves family, and they built the concept of family and support into the press from the ground up.