Penguin Books Australia

ADULT PUBLISHING DIVISION

The Monthly Catch

The General Publishing team at Penguin Group (Australia) is keen and excited to read new work from Australian authors, and as such we’ve developed the Monthly Catch. For the first week of every month, we throw our doors open to unsolicited manuscripts. In this time period (the 1^st to the 7^th of every month), please send through submissions based on the guidelines below.

We are only accepting submissions electronically – all hardcopy submissions will be recycled. And we are only accepting submissions in the first week of every month; anything that comes through outside of this time will not be considered.

When you send through your submission, you’ll receive an automatic email acknowledging receipt. All manuscripts are carefully read and assessed, but we can only respond to those who are successful. If we do not contact you within three months of submission, please assume that we have decided not to pursue your manuscript. No further correspondence will be entered into.

We are not currently considering poetry, educational textbooks or plays/scripts. We are only looking for books intended for an adult audience; for books for children and young adults, please see the separate submissions instructions below.

Attach your manuscript and a short synopsis (of no more than 300 words) as separate Word documents and send via email to monthly.catch@au.penguingroup.com.

In the subject line of your email, please state the title of your book, whether your book is fiction or non-fiction, and then genre (eg Heiress in Love: Fiction/Romance or The Address Book: Non-Fiction/Memoir).

Please include in the body of your email the following information:

• Title.
• Brief summary (two or three sentences).
• Brief author bio (two or three sentences).

• Any previous publishing history and/or any writing awards you’ve received.
• Where would your book sit in the marketplace – i.e. what books would you see as comparison titles to yours, what authors are similar to you, who is the intended audience for your book, etc.
• Has this proposal been sent to other publishers?
• Have you previously submitted this, or a similar, proposal to Penguin? If so, please give details.

ILLUSTRATED NON-FICTION/ LANTERN BOOKS

Lantern Books, an imprint of Penguin Books, is a leading publisher of lifestyle books, including cookbooks, books on fashion, style, interiors, travel and gardening. We publish around thirty-five books each year.

Lantern is currently accepting unsolicited manuscripts. If you have a proposal that you would like to submit, please send lantern@au.penguingroup.com a covering letter, a short curriculum vitae, a synopsis, table of contents, and some selected artwork/photography, if relevant. If you have one, please also send a sample chapter. Please do not send more than 2 MB of material.

Someone will be in contact with you in relation to your proposal within about four months.

BOOKS FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS DIVISION

The Books for Children and Young Adults (BCYA) division of Penguin Group (Australia) is the leading publisher of books for young people in this country. We produce picture books, story books, novels and some non-fiction works. We publish over 100 titles every year, ranging from books for very young children to publications for adolescents and beyond.

We are currently accepting unsolicited manuscripts.

We receive many thousands of manuscripts each year and only a very small percentage do get published. With that said, some of the names we know and love started out in the unsolicited pile and we understand that hidden gems can be discovered there.

Please note below, we are no longer sending individual responses for every manuscript submission. However, we would like to assure all aspiring authors that every submission is read and its potential carefully assessed.

Read through our guidelines carefully, as incorrectly submitted work will be automatically deleted.

Good luck!

The BCYA Submission Process:

When you send your submission in to us, we will acknowledge we have received it by sending an automatic response email. From here, your manuscript will be read by an editor and assessed. Due to the large amount of manuscripts we receive, if you are unsuccessful you will not hear anything more from us regarding your submission, and we are unable to give personal feedback.

Important Note: Only one submission will be considered per three-month period from the same author. If you submit more than one story your entire submission will be deleted without response.

• Please send all submissions electronically to BCYAsubmissions@au.penguingroup.com.

Note: We only accept submissions via email and any submissions sent via post will not be considered or returned. Any adult submissions will not be accepted and general enquiries will not be responded to from this email.

• All manuscript submission files must be under 3MB in total and clearly named following the structure below:

• Title by Author name MS (for manuscript files) – Word document or PDF.
• Title by Author name SYN (for synopsis files) – Word document or PDF.
• Title by Author name CVR (for cover letter files) – Word document or PDF.
• Title by Author name ART (for artwork files) – JPEG or PDF file/s.

• Put your name and the title of your work in the subject heading of your email. All files should be included in the one email. Do not use symbols in the subject line – ie &,?,!,(,), “,”,/,\.

• Novels are to be submitted as a Word document and should be accompanied by a pitch letter with full contact details and brief author biography. Please also provide a synopsis of no more than a page in length; unless the project is for a series or trilogy, in which case we would expect a succinct outline for each title and acknowledge this might run to more than one page.

• Picture book texts should be submitted as Word documents, with accompanying letter as per the above. Text can be accompanied by artwork but is not necessarily a requirement.

• Artwork submissions and samples should be supplied as scans saved in JPEG format or PDF file/s with an accompanying covering letter. Please do not send files bigger than 3MB in total. Any oversize files will be automatically deleted without response. ZIP files are not accepted.

• Penguin Books (Australia) undertakes to assess unsolicited manuscript submissions within a three-to four-month period from receipt of email. If you have not received a second response after this period, it may be assumed that we have declined to pursue the submission any further.

• BCYA (Penguin Group, Australia) will not store any submissions beyond this four month period.

Other Submissions

AUSSIE BITES, AUSSIE NIBBLES AND AUSSIE CHOMPS

Currently, unsolicited submissions for these three series are not being accepted. This policy is reviewed at regular intervals, so please monitor this site.

If at first you don’t succeed…

Whilst we are unable to give feedback on every manuscript we receive, there are many avenues to help writers grow and improve.

We recommend keeping up to date with our Penguin author tips (coming soon); changed monthly on our website. This has advice from some of Penguin’s authors and is an opportunity for you to gain knowledge from those who have succeeded in getting published.

We advise referring to as many books about the writing process as you can source. To view some titles we recommend please click here.

It’s also a good idea to contact the writers' centre in your state or territory for assistance with the writing process and referral to community writing groups, agents and manuscript assessment services.

• ACT Writers' Centre
• Australian Writers Marketplace
• NSW Writers' Centre
• NT Writers' Centre Inc.
• Queensland Writers Centre
• South Australian Writers' Centre
• Tasmanian Writers' Centre
• Writers Victoria
• WritingWA