What happens when we say yes to adventure?
Sometimes it takes us across the world. Sometimes it changes our career, challenges what we thought we were capable of, introduces us to people we never expected to meet, or takes us somewhere that exists only in our imagination.
And sometimes, it begins with a book.
For our Fall 2026 season, Publishizer is celebrating ADVENTURE and calling on writers and authors to take us somewhere new.
We’re looking for stories that transport us, challenge us, surprise us, and capture what happens when we venture beyond what we already know.
There are two ways to participate.
For writers looking to gain feedback, visibility, and submission experience, submit an original 750–1,200 word short story inspired by one idea:
Saying yes to adventure.
That “yes” might mean boarding the plane. Taking the risk. Starting over. Confronting a fear. Entering an unknown world. Meeting someone unexpected. Or choosing a path you never imagined taking.
The adventure can be real or imagined, enormous or everyday. We want to know what happens when someone says yes to the unknown. Judges will evaluate the top five submissions, with the finalists featured on the Publishizer Blog.
For authors with a book-length idea ready to take the next step, we’re calling for book proposals across five categories:
Journeys & Exploration
Travel, place, culture, nature, discovery, and adventures that take us somewhere new.
Reinvention
Personal transformation, fitness journeys, second acts, major life changes, and stories about becoming someone new.
Adventures of the Mind
Psychology, curiosity, big ideas, self-discovery, and explorations that change how we understand ourselves or the world.
Adventures of Business
Entrepreneurship, career pivots, leadership, risk-taking, building something new, and navigating the unknown.
Fiction & Imagined Worlds
Quests, discovery, mystery, transformation, and adventures limited only by the imagination.
Adventure isn’t always about where you go. Sometimes it’s about having the courage to change direction.
That’s one reason we chose Pivot-Quest as our Fall 2026 Publishizer Book Club pick.
At its heart, Pivot-Quest explores how we navigate change, uncertainty, and reinvention by approaching a pivot as a quest rather than simply something to survive.
It captures an idea at the heart of this season:
What if the pivot isn’t an interruption to the adventure? What if the pivot is the adventure?
I first fell in love with books because they let me experience adventures far beyond my own world. Eventually, I realized the best stories did something more: they made me want to create adventures of my own.
That idea still shapes why I do what I do today. Publishing gives us the opportunity to help someone take an idea, story, or experience that lives inside them and invite other people into it.
Some of my favorite adventures have taken me to extraordinary places. Others have come from saying yes to opportunities without knowing exactly where they would lead. Evolving Publishizer has certainly been one of them.
That’s what I love about this theme: adventure is bigger than travel. It’s what becomes possible when we’re willing to go somewhere we haven’t been before.
— Bethany
To me, adventure is about breaking away from the mundane. It means acting first and thinking later, making spontaneous plans and being curious. It’s deciding to get a cheap concert ticket on the same day it’s happening, meeting a friend in a city neither of us has been to because it’s the halfway point between us, or moving to the Canary Islands simply because I wondered what my life there might look like. I don’t think adventure necessarily has to be some grand event. I get the same kind of adrenaline kick from signing up for a random dance class after a busy day at work. Adventure is choosing the unknown over the predictable, even if it’s just for an afternoon.
— Myrna
For me, adventure feels especially meaningful right now. Having just graduated from university, I’m at the beginning of a completely new chapter - stepping into the working world, exploring a career in publishing, and figuring out where that path might take me. Saying yes to adventure means embracing that uncertainty, taking opportunities as they come, and being open to the people, places, and experiences I’ll discover along the way. Right now, the unknown feels like the most exciting part.
— Mir
We spend our days helping people turn ideas into books, and our team knows that adventure can take many forms.
It can mean traveling somewhere completely unfamiliar. Changing careers. Building a business. Pursuing a creative calling. Challenging yourself physically. Following your curiosity. Or simply saying yes when it would have been easier to stay comfortable.
Adventure can happen across an ocean, inside a business, through a personal transformation, within the mind, or in a world entirely of your own creation.
It can be the decision to leave, to begin, to explore, to imagine, to change, or simply to say yes.
Your next adventure might just begin with a story. Join us and take the first step toward publishing yours.