JLRB Preſs

About Us

• How We Advocate for Our Authors

  • How We Help Protect Your Rights
  • How We Get Your Poetry Noticed
• How Our Manuscript Review Process Works

• How Our Publishing Process Works

  • Prepress
  • Promotion
  • Compensation
• How We Maintain Our Independence
• How We Print Our Books
• What Our Authors Say About Us
• Colophon

Our imprint came into being when we could no longer deny how diffi­cult and expensive, how im­possible it has be­come for a poet to get a work into print (let alone a first collection—the foot in the door).

Have you ever become discouraged after receiving a form letter that begins with “Unfortunately, we can’t place your work in our catalogue…” but never explains why or how you might’ve missed the mark?

We know what it is like to feel frustrated, dis­appointed, dispirited, to lose courage as the writ­ten word flees… For these reasons—and many others—we begin by giving eve­ry submission that follows our guidelines a detailed res­ponse and then proceed according to the following values.

Our Values

• 🧑‍🎨 Art is artful first: We seek out, develop, and foster verse that pays close attention to rhythm and sound and pushes the boundaries of the familiar. We work with you to improve the strongest parts of your sub­mission and give you new direction for conquering the creative world.
• 🔑️ Publishing is an open door: We take down gate­keep­ing barriers to publishing creative works of poetry. Even if your work isn’t ready for print, we point out what works well in your writing and give clear guidance on specific points for im­provement. You can follow up on our feedback, re­work, and resubmit your manuscript during our next open submission period.
• 🧑‍🏫 Teaching is the best way to learn: We be­come bet­ter writers by guiding and em­powering others on their journeys through technical and editorial challenges. Along the way, we discover and try out new ideas, to­geth­er. We give initial feedback, follow it up with de­tailed feedback and advice on your collection’s struc­ture, and check in regularly to discuss your progress.
• 🤝 Asking for help is normal and natural: We might be experienced writers, editors, graphic designers, and publishers, but we didn’t get here overnight, and we didn’t get here alone. When we accept your manuscript, you benefit from our expertise and trust us to make the best decisions for your manuscript.

Meet our staff

Learn about our manuscript review process

Learn about our publishing process

How We Advocate for Our Authors

Important: JLRB Press doesn’t take payment for pub­li­ca­tion. We rely on rigorous se­lection criteria that guide us to­wards publi­shing the most significant poetic works.

JLRB Press is neither a vanity press (a variety of predatory publishing where an organization acts unethically by publishing any paying submitter, often without rigorous vetting of manuscripts or a well-struc­tured edi­to­ri­al pro­cess), nor a hybrid publisher (an or­ganization that charges authors fees for publishing ser­vi­ces).

Confused about the different types of publishing out there? Read our explainer

The central ethos of JLRB Press isn’t profit, but bringing the best poetry to the hearts and minds of willing readers. We not only accept a small portion of manuscripts for pub­li­ca­tion, but also consider the cultural space that a manuscript might occupy, specifically within the queer, neu­rodivergent, and outsider discourses. We read your sub­missions very care­ful­ly and treat every single engagement as a way to help an author grow, regardless of whether the work is ready for publication.

If your manuscript is strong, we offer an agreement and as­sume all costs and risk associated with getting your book into the world. If your manuscript still needs work, we of­fer actionable feedback, free of charge.

How We Help Protect Your Rights

To protect your rights as an author, all of our contracts for chapbook- and book-length poetry manuscripts include the following stipulations.

• Copyrights: Our publishing agreement stipulates that you own the copyright to your work and every printed copy carries a notice with the publication year and your name. (You can optionally re­gister your Canadian co­pyright and receive a digital cer­tificate from Library and Archives Canada.)
• Moral Rights: We edit your work carefully, bring any questions to you as soon as they arise, and are always respectful of your moral rights.
• Subsidiary Rights: Any opportunities, such as trans­lations, film adaptations, or merchan­dising, remain with you.
• Royalties: Your share of the profits stays the same re­gardless of changes on our end. We send royalty pay­ments and a detailed report one week af­ter the end of the second and fourth quarters.
• Five-Year Agreement Term: Our agreements are in ef­fect for five years from signing and require re­negotiation when they expire.

How We Get Your Poetry Noticed

Because we’re intimately familiar with the chal­lenge of raising the profile of poetry as a genre and praxis in general and the promotion of au­thors and their books in specific, we take a com­plete approach to publishing by:

• Building up a community by promoting poetry events, contests, and prizes in British Colum­bia (with a focus on Nanaimo, Victoria, and Van­couver) and the world.
• Organizing booths at events such as literary and Pride festivals and book fairs.
• Printing small runs of our books and selling them in our online book­shop and by agree­ment with local book­shops and busi­nesses.
• Distributing our printed books on de­mand through major online retailers such as Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
• Distributing ebook versions of some of our books in DRM-free formats through Nook (Barnes and Noble) in the U.S., Kindle (Amazon) in Canada and 12 other coun­tries, and Google Play in Canada and 65 other coun­tries.

  Note: From December 1, 2025, we no longer distribute ebooks through Kobo (Indigo in Canada or Rakuten world­wide) or Apple Books.

• Gathering subscribers for our monthly news­letter that promotes events, authors, and books
• Building profile pages for our authors and their books and performing long-term search engine optimization.

Because we know that your success is also our success, we continue to promote you and your book long after you sign your contract. ❤️

Submit your manuscript

How Our Manuscript Review Process Works

If you’re here because you want your poems to be seen, read, and touched on the printed page, you’ve come to the right place. We love poetry and, if you want to get your verse into the hands of eager readers, we’re here for you.

JLRB Press works with authors of chapbook-length (25–50 pages) and book-length (50–150 pages) manuscripts. Be­cause our editorial prac­tices bind us to the promise to re­spond with specific feedback to every submission, we tailor our responses to our assessment of the readi­ness of your work, according to the following three categories:

• 📕 Manuscript in Early Stages of Preparation
  The submission comprises a mixed collection of strong poems and pieces with room for improve­ment. The collection might lack a central unifying theme or over­arching vision, might seem uneven in tone or mood, and might flow in a way confusing to readers.

  We contact you within 4 business weeks with specific feed­back about the strongest aspects of your work and the most important areas for improvement. We invite you to continue work­ing on your collection and to resub­mit it during our next open submission period.

• 📒 Manuscript Partially Ready for Publication
  The submission includes a consistent col­lection of po­ems (with a few outliers) that have a broad unifying theme but haven’t been grouped into sections, typeset, or edited. The poems might be arranged partially and might have received some preliminary editing or type­setting.

  We contact you within 4 business weeks with specific feed­back and schedule a free, 1-hour, one-on-one con­sultation with one of our editors. Your editor provides feedback and invites you to to continue work­ing on your collection and to resub­mit it during our next open submission period.

• 📗 Manuscript Ready for Publication
  The submission raises the bar for poetic concepts, forms, and techniques and includes a tight-knit collection of poems that have a broad unifying theme and have been grouped into sections, typeset, and edi­ted.

  We contact you within 4 business weeks with specific feed­back and schedule a free, 1-hour, one-on-one con­sultation with one of our editors. You and your editor discuss your sub­mission. Your editor provides feedback and outlines the publishing process for you. You make a decision, discuss next steps with your editor, and then receive your contract.

Submit your manuscript

How Our Publishing Process Works

When we identify works that we want to bring to a wider audience, we as­sume the entirety of the risk associated with producing and publish­ing a work.

The following are the benefits for authors whose manu­scripts JLRB Press accepts for publication.

Prepress

• Cover design
• Editing with feedback
• Interior layout and typesetting in 6″ × 9″ softcover for­mat
• Proofreading
• Digital galleys in PDF format
• One free print proof (for authors in North America)

Promotion

• Author profile and book details page on the JLRB Press website
• Virtual book launch or in-person book launch in British Columbia, Canada
• Book announcements and promotion on our so­cial me­dia accounts
• Nominations for prizes and awards in Canada (up to 2 awards)

Note: While we’re dedicated to supporting and promoting the books we publish, JLRB Press doesn’t act as a lit­erary agent or pub­licist. We encourage authors to take an act­ive role in pro­mot­ing their works alongside our ef­forts, which we may make at our expense and discretion.

Compensation

• Advance against royalties (upon publication)

  • Book: $100
  • Chapbook: $50

• Free author copies (additional copies CAD $3 plus ship­ping)

  • Book: 4
  • Chapbook: 2
• 10% of net earnings (per book, quarterly)

Submit your manuscript

How We Maintain Our Independence

The following growing list of principles outlines our non-negotiable boundaries that serve as as­sur­an­ces of our edi­to­ri­al independence, or­gan­i­za­tion­al integrity, and o­pe­ra­tion­al self-sufficiency.

• No External Funding: We don’t receive fund­ing from any governmental, educational, or in­sti­tu­tion­al or­gan­i­za­tions. We gratefully ac­knowl­edge and promptly return all honoraria or stipends and, when it isn’t possible to re­turn such funds, (this is also true for all past honoraria and stipends), we promptly make do­na­tions to or­gan­i­za­tions that we sup­port). There are no ex­cep­tions to this policy, regardless of any operational circumstances or financial hardships on our part.
• Community and Alliances: Because we are entirely self-funded, we decide which or­gan­i­za­tions—that encourage the development and growth of poets and artists—we support morally and monetarily. To date, we have sup­port­ed Eavesdrop Magazine, Victoria Anar­chist Book­fair, Nanaimo Pride Society, Open Space Victoria, Queer Writers of Cal­gary, Victoria Pride Society, Pla­net Earth Po­etry, Spec Theatre, and more.

How We Print Our Books

Note: JLRB Press has not received con­sid­er­a­tion for the fol­lowing testimony, whose sole aim is to inform fellow in­de­pen­dent and small pub­lishers.

One of the main concerns of independent pub­li­shers is economy. For this reason, to have smaller quantities of books available for book launches and other events on short notice, we typically print the first 50 copies of a title on demand and then arrange print runs for specific titles from a pro­fessional book printer, such as Blitzprint, based in Calgary, AB.

Blitzprint, which has been in business for more than 30 years, has printed thousands of books across numerous genres, offering a variety of printing options.

We’ve been working closely with Blitz­print since 2024, producing a number of high-quality editions of We Were Hateful People, The Love of a Good Man, Holes: An An­thology of Poems about Depths, Dark­ness, and Desire—and more. Because Blitz­print has helped empower our mis­sion of pub­lishing marginalized voices, we strongly re­com­mend this book printer.

What Our Authors Say About Us

Here are some excerpts from reviews that our authors have written about JLRB Press:

Read all our reviews

Submit your manuscript

Colophon

The name JLRB Press (formerly, Joint Literary Review Board) rep­resents the convergence of the mul­titude of per­ceptions and perspectives from our editors and staff.

The ſ (long s) in our logotype is symbolic of the strong con­nec­tion that JLRB Press maintains to the history of textual pro­duction.

Our motto is a play on the Latin maxim littera scripta manet (the written word endures), which is commonly attri­buted to the Roman poet Ho­race and (ironically) was once used by the now-defunct Vancouver chain of bookstores Duthie Books.

We don’t believe that the written word endures and our motto expresses the urgency of defen­ding poetry and preserving it in print.