Children’s Books

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.

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. 

Allen & Unwin https://www.allenandunwin.com/about-allen-and-unwin/submission-guidelines/children-young-adult-submission-guidelines
Penguin Random House https://www.penguin.com.au/getting-published/children
University of Queensland Press https://www.uqp.com.au/pages/submissions
Hachette Livre Australia https://www.hachette.com.au/submissions/
Windy Hollow Books Commissioning editor, Windy Hollow Books, PO Box 265, East Kew Victoria 3102, Australia
Affirm Press https://affirmpress.com.au/submissions/
Scribble  https://scribblekidsbooks.com/submission-guidelines/
MidnightSun Publishing https://midnightsunpublishing.com/submissions/submission-guidelines/