UPDATE January 2019 – They have not been open to direct submissions for over a year and it seems unlikely that they will reopen to submissions at this point.
HarperLegend is a digital first imprint from HarperOne which is itself an imprint of Harper Collins. What I mean by digital first is that they publish an eBook and then if it does well they publish a print edition. If your book is more than 25,000 words, it will be available as a print-on-demand at those same retailers initially.
HarperLegend is looking to publish a very specific kind of book. They call it visionary fiction. They list a number of an examples to help potential submitters parse that statement. The full list of examples of books that fit their criteria is listed below.
- THE ALCHEMIST by Paulo Coelho
- THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS and the SPACE TRILOGY by C.S. Lewis
- THE MONK WHO SOLD HIS FERRARI by Robin Sharma
- LIFE’S GOLDEN TICKET by Brendon Burchard
- THE SHACK by William Paul Young
- LIFE OF PI by Yann Martel
- BUDDHA by Deepak Chopra
- THE WAY OF THE PEACEFUL WARRIOR by Dan Millman
- SILENCE by Shusaku Endo
- SIDDHARTHA by Herman Hesse
As you can gather from this list they are looking for books with a strong spiritual undercurrent from any number of faith traditions.
They are only interested in submissions containing complete manuscripts. They will try to respond to submissions quickly. If you have not heard from them in three months, your work has been rejected. They do not send rejection letters.
All submissions must be made through their easy to use submission system.
If your work is accepted, you will be assigned an editor. This will be a person with an email address, phone number, Twitter handle, etc with whom you can communicate with directly. Your editor will be your point person for all things moving forward in the publication process.
HarperLegend has general marketing strategies but they also also try to develop one for each book, specifically. A lot of their focus and attention goes into marketing.
According to their website, this is how the royalties work: “HarperLegend royalties are 50% after the first 10,000 copies sold and start at 25%. We do not pay advances against royalties. If we later decide to publish the book in print format at one of our imprints, you will receive standard print royalties.”
If you are interested in submitting to HaperLegend, visit their website here.
