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Submitting a children's manuscript to Penguin Random House

If you would like your manuscript for children or young adults to be considered, please take a couple of minutes to read our important guidelines.

Submit via email

We do not accept hardcopy submissions.

Submit at the right time

If your manuscript will engage and excite young readers, we'd love to see it. Picture book submissions are open from 1 April to 30 November. All other submissions are open from 1 February to 30 November.

We do not accept

Plays/scripts, poetry (except children's stories written in verse) or educational text books.

Email Submissions Checklist

All submissions must include the following

Subject Line

Include your name and the title of your manuscript.

Body Copy

In the body of the email, please include a cover letter about your submission, including:

  • Your name
  • Contact details including phone number, home address and mailing address (if different)
  • Manuscript title and word count
  • The target reading market (e.g.target age and genre) for your proposed book, how your proposed book appeals to that market, and any comparison books in the market
  • A blurb or synopsis of your manuscript (no longer than 400 words)
  • Details of any previous publishing history and/or any writing awards you've received
  • A brief one-paragraph biography of yourself.

Attachment

Please attach the complete manuscript to the email. We accept Microsoft Word or PDF formats. The manuscript should be double spaced with page numbers.

  • For picture book texts, you can add short text notes for suggested page breaks or spreads if you prefer, but do not add manual page breaks. (We’d expect most picture book texts to be presented in fewer than 6 pages.)
  • For illustrated texts or illustrator portfolios, please submit a PDF of no more than 32 pages. The file may need to be saved at low resolution to meet file size requirements. Please indicate in your email cover letter if the attachment is a partial or complete manuscript.
  • Please ensure that file size of any attachments does not exceed 7MB total.
  • We are unable to open links to file transfer or cloud services.

Email Submissions To:

kidspitch@penguinrandomhouse.com.au

If You Are a Published Children's Author

If you are directing your submission to one of our publishers in particular, please specify this in your query email. If you have already communicated with one of our publishers, you may email them directly with your query.

If You Are a Literary Agent

Literary agents should continue to submit directly to our publishers.

Please Note

We accept simultaneous submissions provided that you mention you have submitted to other publishers in your cover email. As a matter of courtesy, we ask that you inform us as soon as possible if your manuscript is accepted elsewhere.

Please do not resubmit a manuscript you have sent previously unless invited by one of our publishers or editors. We will detect and delete resubmitted manuscripts.

Our Consideration Process

Submitted manuscripts will be considered by one or more of our publishers or editors. It may also be read by other people in-house, including (but not limited to) sales, marketing and publicity staff. Submissions are treated as confidential material.

Response

Due to the large volume of query emails we receive, we are unable to respond to submissions that are unsuccessful. If we are interested in your manuscript you will be advised in writing when your submission has been assessed. If you do not receive a response from us within four months please assume your submission is unsuccessful.

Unfortunately we are unable to provide feedback on unsuccessful submissions.