If you can’t beat’em…

Meredith Bond
3 min readMay 16, 2024

That’s part of the inspiration behind Annessa Ink Publishing–a new digital-first publishing venture started by Meredith Bond and Heidi Betts.

If you’re a writer of fiction, you know how difficult the submission process can be. Even before the possibility of dreaded rejection letters, we have to run the gauntlet of Publisher Guidelines. This is especially true when it comes to category romance, but most publishers have a fairly specific idea of what they’re looking for and what they’re willing to publish. Annessa Ink is a little more–or maybe even a lot more 😉 –flexible. We want wonderful stories that authors love to write! Is there a “Book of Your Heart” you’ve never been able to place because there isn’t a market for it or it’s not currently on-trend? Yoo-hoo…we’ll look at it!

What about being an established author who’s lost her home? Maybe your editor left and things never really clicked again after that. Maybe the line you were writing for closed and there’s nowhere else for you to go with the same type of stories you’ve enjoyed writing for so long. Um…hello! Over here! As a former author for the now-defunct Harlequin Desire line, Heidi knows what you’re going through, and that’s one of the reasons she was so eager to dive into this venture. She wanted somewhere for us to go…for those of us who still want to be writing Desire- or SuperRomance- or Temptation- or Blaze- or Loveswept-like romance. We can’t re-create those lines, but we can certainly publish the same kinds of books!

Don’t get caught up in worries about word count or heat levels or what you might be “allowed” to do within a certain type of story, either. Again, because we aren’t working with “lines” or specific guidelines, there’s no square box to squeeze a round story into. If you have a concern about that sort of thing, reach out to us; we’d be happy to chat. If we think something is too long or too short, too hot or too tame, or crosses a line in some way, we’ll let you know during the editing process.

The only thing we don’t accept is illegal/barely legal activities, including incest, underage relationships, school girl fantasies, rape, or anything that un-empowers a person. Erotica is also not accepted, sorry!

Finally, one of the best things about Annessa Ink is that it’s established BY AUTHORS and FOR AUTHORS. Let’s just say that we take the term “author-friendly” to a whole new level! 😀 We understand the writing life and the writer’s plight, and want to make the publishing process both easy and enjoyable. (Dare I say even…fun?! ) Your input will be taken into consideration every step of the way so we can put together the best and most beautiful version of your book before sending it out into the world.

If that sounds like something you’d like to be a part of, drop us a line…we’re happy to help! Want to more? Check us out at https://annessaink.com or, more specifically, https://annessaink.com/submissions/.

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Meredith Bond

Award winning author, Meredith Bond's books straddle that beautiful line between historical romance and fantasy. Merry is also a writing coach and formatter.