The Soundings Reading Period
Open October 13 through December 15, 2026.
Crossroads is a Chattanooga press for nonfiction with a message, and we do things a little differently here. We read. We respond. We give real feedback. No games with query letters or synopses: send what gets to the point, is organized, and says enough.
This fall we're reading books of the inner life, and everyone who sends one gets a written answer from the publisher within 21 days. We hope one is an Enneagram book that argues something.
No query letter, no agent, no form reply. A person reads it and writes back.
01
If the manuscript is finished, send the whole thing. If it isn't, send a proposal: a one-page overview, a chapter outline, and one or two sample chapters. That's all a proposal needs to be.
02
That's the whole cost. It doesn't buy a yes, it isn't a credit toward anything, and no one calls you afterward to sell you something.
03
Within 21 days, from Chad Prevost, who founded the press and decides what it publishes. It says where your book stands: Ready, Nearly, or Not Yet. If it takes us longer than 21 days, you get your $25 back.
Contemplative practice. Vocation. Grief and thresholds. The second half of life. The Enneagram. Written by someone who has lived or practiced what they're writing about.
This period is for our Soundings lane: a book that goes down into a question about the inner life and comes back with something. We like short books. Ours run from about 25,000 words to 60,000. We're especially glad to read women writing from their own expertise, and contemplatives and teachers of every tradition.
What we mean by the inner life. Where does the next Let Your Life Speak find a publisher? The next Falling Upward, To Bless the Space Between Us, Callings, Toward a Psychology of Awakening, The Complete Enneagram, The Sacred Enneagram, Facets of Unity? Books like those were once the center of a list. The houses that published them have mostly turned to platform and promise: the book a famous person can sell, or the book with seven steps. The slow book of the inner life, the one that reads a tradition from the inside and carries it into an ordinary day, has fewer homes than it had.
By contemplative we don't mean a doctrine. We mean a way of attending: the long look, the practice kept, the willingness to be changed by what you look at. East and West both. The mystics and the psychologists in the same room. Attention as the first act, and the book as what attention produced.
We're a home for traditions grounded in the East and the West. A home for integration. A home for pioneers and curious thinkers. A home for the developing conversation of the Enneagram. A home for books that raise the sights of the people who read them.
Straight up, and with a reason.
We'd be glad to publish this. The letter proposes terms for your book and says why.
It's close. The letter names what stands between the book and Ready. You can send it again once in the next six months at no charge.
The letter says why, and points you to one book, teacher, or resource we think would help. Nothing is offered or sold to you after a Not Yet.
We're a hybrid press, and our prices are public. Every book on our list gets the same treatment, whoever carries the cost.
A working publisher reads every page. The editorial work is included, not sold as an extra: developmental, line, copy, proof. The book comes out in print, ebook, and audio under the imprint, with a cover from a Crossroads house family, distribution through Ingram and Amazon, and a press that keeps selling it after launch week. You keep your copyright and the majority of net royalties, and the license runs three years, then year to year.
What it costs an author, and what's included at each length, is on the Engagements page. A Ready letter proposes terms for your book in writing, and you decide. Nothing is settled on a call, and nothing is sold after a Nearly or a Not Yet.
You should be wary of anyone who charges to read your work. Here's what you're buying.
Literary agents aren't supposed to charge to read. Publishers sometimes do, and you deserve to know what you get for it. Here it's this: your pages read by the person who makes the decision, and a written answer in three weeks. Most writers wait months for a form reply, or for nothing.
The $25 doesn't buy a yes. It isn't a deposit or a credit toward anything. And we don't follow up a reading with a sales call.
Sending it gives us no rights to it. We don't share your pages with anyone. If we want to publish the book, we'll propose terms in writing and you'll decide.
Just tell us if it's taken. One book per writer per reading period. Previously self-published books are welcome; tell us where it's been.
Whether any part of the manuscript was drafted with an AI tool. The retail platforms now ask publishers to disclose it, so we ask you. And whether the book has been out before, in any form.
The Soundings Reading Period opens October 13, 2026.
Use the time to read your draft through once more and put a proposal together. If you'd like a note when the door opens, email chad@crossroadspublishing.group and say so.
Fields with an asterisk are required. After this form you'll pay the $25 on a secure Stripe page, and your pages are in the queue the moment it clears.
