Pleasure Boat Studio Basics:
Pleasure Boat Studio, a small, independent press founded by Jack Estes in 1996, publishes small quantities of high-quality literature, as well as publications from Empty Bowl Press, one from Broken Moon Press, and a couple from Storybook Press. We offer books under the imprints of Aequitas Press (non-fiction) and Caravel Books (mysteries). The average print run is 1500 copies.
Publisher and fiction editor Jack Estes completed this profile.
Two Titles Representative of Their Fiction List:
Terrell Guillory, Schilling, and Irving Warner, Wagner, Descending
What They're Looking For:
Non-genre, literary titles.
What Pleasure Boat Studio Offers That Commercial Presses Don't:
A personal touch, a collaborative venture from beginning to end.
Things Most Likely to Put Them Off :
Overstating a manuscript's value or quality and not knowing who I am, or what kinds of books I publish (i.e., just writing a generic letter to all 5000 small presses listed online).
How to Spark Their Interest:
Demonstrate the quirkiness of the book.
Address for Submissions:
pleasboat@nyc.rr.com (please no unsolicited hard copies).
Additional Advice for Submitting Work:
Don’t get discouraged if we don’t want to see your work, or if we reject it once we do see it. There are so many reasons for rejecting a work other than how good it is. The quality of a work doesn’t necessarily matter as much as the timing, the taste of the editor, the match-up with the press, the supposed marketability, whatever.
As of 2008, Pleasure Boat is not accepting unsolicited mss.
