INFORMATION
- About Literary Agents
- About Golvan Arts
- About writing in Australia:
- Fiction
- Non-Fiction
- Children’s Books
- Scripts
- Poetry-Short Stories
- Illustration
GENERAL INFORMATION
About writing in Australia: Children’s Books, Fiction and Non-Fiction, including the Teenage and Young Adult market
Picture Storybook texts should be divided into 15 double page spreads with text on each spread evoking at least one image. The text should "sing" when read out loud and is best kept quite short in length, say 300 to 900 words. Please note that publishers are most unlikely to take on picture storybook texts and illustrations by inexperienced authors and illustrators because this type of book is extremely expensive to produce. Our suggestion is that you read Ark in the Park by Wendy Orr and published by Angus & Robertson in 1994. This book won the Children’s Book Council Award for young readers in 1995. This format is of interest to most children’s publishers. Some publishers are doing a similar format with even less text. These books are usually aimed at 6 to 10 year olds.
Children’s manuscripts can be assessed by Mr Sean Doyle at LYNK Manuscript Service (PO Box 7004, Lismore Heights, NSW 2480; phone: (02) 6624 5750) or your local Writers’ Centre. After responding to suggestions in the assessment report, you could approach the following publishers. In your cover letter to publishers, include information about yourself as well as a brief outline about your piece. With stories of 10,000 words or less, you may as well send in the whole manuscript with your initial enquiry. With longer novels, we advise you prepare a short synopsis that provides the reader with some information about the plot and main characters but does not give away too much. It can be as short as the sort of “blurbs” that appear on the cover of books. You should also enclose a short CV. At Golvan Arts we prefer to read the first few chapters rather than excerpts from different parts of the story. Remember to enclose a stamped, self addressed envelope if you want your material returned to you.
- Allen & Unwin
- 406 Albert St East Melbourne VIC 3002
Contact: Rosalind Price - HarperCollins
- PO Box 14795 Melbourne City VIC 8001
Contact: Lisa Berryman - Koala Books
- PO Box 626 Mascot NSW 1460
Contact: Cathie Tasker - Penguin Books
- PO Box 701 Hawthorn VIC 3124
Contact: Children’s Publishing - Random House Australia
- www.randomhouse.com.au
Contact: Random House Australia Web site for information about how to submit manuscripts. - Scholastic
- PO Box 579 Lindfield NSW 2070
Contact: Ana Vivas - University of Queensland Press
- PO Box 6042, St Lucia QLD 4067
Contact: Leonie Tyle
GOLVAN ARTS MANAGEMENT • PO Box 766, Kew, Victoria 3101 Australia • golvan@ozemail.com.au