Submissions

On this page you will find our submissions guidelines for fiction, picture books, poetry, non-fiction, illustration and translations, followed by general tips and guidance.

Sizzling stories, page–turning plots and creative characters please apply within. We are always on the lookout for fresh talent and new ideas.

If you are a literary agent, please do feel free to give us a call and we’ll be happy to discuss our plans for our list.

We cannot emphasise enough the importance of following our submission guidelines. Every week we receive hundreds of new submissions by post and email. We are one of the few trade publishers who do accept 'unsolicited' manuscripts and artwork, and we do so because we are committed to discovering and shaping new talent. Inevitably, this creates a huge volume of administration. Quite simply, if you do not include a full covering letter, a synopsis and the required number of sample chapters, we cannot consider your submission properly. It is also essential that you do your research thoroughly, and ask yourself if your work would really fit in with our list.

We are not a literary consultancy. We cannot give you advice and feedback on your writing.

We are not a literary agency, although we strongly recommend that any aspiring author should try to find an agent before submitting directly to us. Agents know the business inside out; they are the best people to give you advice, find your book the right home and negotiate contracts on your behalf. Agents are like publishers in that they are all different. You need to do your research and find the right one for you.

Q: What sort of books are we looking for?

A: Picture books, fiction, poetry, non-fiction and illustration for children aged 3 and upwards. We will consider books of all genres for all ages. Our criteria is that we publish a book if we think it’s brilliant; which means if children think it's worth reading. It's all about the story.

The Phoenix Yard list has particular areas of focus:

We specialise in character publishing and are looking for character-based series with great writing and with the potential to become the literature, visual, audio and animation landscape of the future.
We are particularly seeking stories and ideas for young fiction (ages 6-9) appealing to boys and;
Comic book style stories (and comic writers and illustrators for this age group).
We are not concentrating on teen fiction / YA but we will consider older fiction and adult novels as part of epic series, sagas or trilogies - brilliant imaginary and fantasy worlds where the reader can really invest their time and will want to return.
Artwork: We are looking for beautiful, distinctive illustration that really pushes the boundaries of design, whilst still being child-friendly and commercial. We do not do generic, mass-market, 'fluffy', 'pink' (in content) illustrations. Our style could be summarised as 'the quirkier end of commercial' or 'the high end of commercial'.

What exactly should I submit? And how much?

Fiction submissions: Please send a synopsis and three sample chapters. Note: a blurb is not a synopsis. We also need a rough estimate of your final word count.
Texts for picture books and non-fiction: Please send the entire text.
Covering letter: All submissions, by post and by email, should be accompanied by a covering letter. A covering letter does not need to be more than one side of A4 and should provide us with the basic details about you and your work, and a short summary of who your book is aimed at and why it will sell. Please remember to date your letter and include contact details.
We do not reply to questions about submissions (Would you be interested in a story about X?) when there is no submission attached to the enquiry.

Illustration submissions:

We accept artwork submissions by post or email but if you are submitting by email please send pdfs. Emails containing large artwork files over 2MB will be filtered out.
If submitting by post please ensure your samples are no larger than A4. Please do not post us your entire portfolio; send us two or three examples of your best work.
If you are emailing a link to an outline portfolio, please ensure that the link takes us straight to your most relevant work; don't make us wade through several links first and/or trawl through hundreds of other designs that are clearly not intended for children's books.
We cannot reply to all illustration submissions but we do keep all artwork samples we like on a file that we refer back to as and when a commission arises.
Never send original artwork.

How do I submit my work?

Email Submissions (submissions@phoenixyardbooks.com) Unfortunately, due to the very large volume of submissions we receive and our time commitments to our existing authors, we can only reply to successful submissions. When you submit by email you will receive an automated response confirming receipt of your submission. If you do not hear anything more from us within 12 weeks, please assume your submission has been unsuccessful.

Please email submissions as Microsoft Word documents or pdfs only. If sending pdfs, ensure the files are not more than 2MB in size.
There is only one email address used for submissions: submissions@phoenixyardbooks.com Submissions to any other email Phoenix Yard email address will not be logged or considered.
You do not need to address your email to a specific person.

Postal submissions: Post submissions to 'Submissions', Phoenix Yard Books, Phoenix Yard, 65 King's Cross Road, London, WC1X 9LW. Please allow up to twelve weeks for a response, although we try to be quick as we can. Regrettably, we are unable to provide any editorial feedback or comment on individual submissions.

We require a stamped addressed envelope with the correct return postage attached to the envelope. If you do not include return postage, you will not get a reply. If you do not want your manuscript returned, please include a small stamped addressed envelope for a reply and a clear instruction in your covering letter to indicate that your do not want your manuscript returned.
If you are submitting from overseas and cannot include the correct return postage, please submit by email instead.
You do not need to address your submission to a specific person. Please clearly mark postal submissions as 'Submissions' or 'Illustration submissions'.
No oversized or heavy packages, novelty formats, fancy wrapping or gifts, please. Manuscripts need to be double-spaced and printed on plain A4 paper. Illustration samples on card or paper, no larger than A4. No CDs.
We take every care of all work sent to us but we cannot be held responsible for loss or damage.

Translations, foreign language submissions and a note to translators

We translate books because we want to bring our English-speaking audience the very best possible children’s books, and we don’t believe that all the best children’s books inevitably start life in the English language. We have regular contact with foreign publishers and we visit the Frankfurt Book Fair, Bologna Children’s Book Fair and the Salon du Livre de Montreuil. Most of our translations to date have been from the French but we are open to brilliant children’s books from anywhere in the world, providing the book will appeal to our primarily British market. Publishing a translation is, of course, a different creative process but the questions we ask pre-selection and the criteria against which we select are exactly for same for translated books as they are for our ‘home-grown’ titles.

If you would like to submit work in another language please take heed of the following:

If you are an author wanting to submit work that is already published in another language, the submission needs to come from the owner of the translation rights, which, in most cases, will be your publisher or agent.
If your work is already published in another language, please provide as much accurate sales and rights data as possible.
We can read submissions in English and French. Submissions in any other language must be accompanied by a covering leter and a synopsis in English and (if submitting fiction) a translation sample of at least 1,000 words.

Translators: We need you to be our eyes and ears in other publishing markets. If you find a brilliant children’s or young adult book that you would like to translate (be it a novel, picture book or non-fiction), please tell us about it! Send us a sample of your proposed translation together with a letter outlining why the book should be translated, why it will appeal to our market, and why it should be published by Phoenix Yard Books.

Five Golden Tips for submitting work to a publisher

1. Read the guidelines. Once you've read the guidelines, read them again.

2. Research your reader. Ask the question: who is my book really meant for? Think about who your target audience is. Never write or illustrate a book hoping it will happen to appeal to somebody other than yourself and your family and friends. Know your intended reader and find out what else they are reading...or not. Age-ranging in children's books is a tricky issue but if you send us a manuscript "suitable for ages 3-10", we will be suspicious. Your subject matter, themes, content, plot, characters, language, sentence structure and general writing style all need to be appropriately targeted to a specific readership. And always write from the height, eyes and mind of the child.

3. Research your market. Invest some time in your local bookshop and library; read book reviews in the press and online. Where would your book fit on the shelves? Once you have familiarised yourself with your reader and their bookshelves, take a long, hard look at your own work. Your work may have great personal significance to you, but is it good enough, original enough, distinctive enough to compete for sales with existing books on the market for the same readership? In publisher speak, is your work commercially viable?

4. Research your publisher. Every publisher's list is slightly different. The fact that you are a writer/illustrator and we are a publisher does not automatically make us compatible (tho' of course we hope it does!). Check out a publisher's other titles and authors. Would your book look and feel at home amongst our other books? Are we a good fit for each other?

5. Scrub up! Polish your work thoroughly and send us your work in the very best state it can possibly be in. Present your work in a clear, neat and professional manner as if you were applying for a job. Submissions riddled with spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes give a very bad impression, as to the many submissions delivered several days late due to illegible handwriting and incorrect postage.

Five things not to say in your submission

These five examples are all lifted directly from past submissions and represent five common misconceptions about children's publishing.

“I’ve loved writing ever since I can remember and it’s my dream to become a published author.”

It’s not (all) about you. It’s not enough to love the creative process of writing a book; a publisher needs convincing that thousands of other people will love reading your book. The journey to publication doesn’t end when you hold a printed copy of the book in your hands, it ends - and hopefully continues – when thousands of children hold the book in their hands. Of course, and rightly so, it’s immensely self-satisfying to see your work in print, but the bottom line is that your writing needs to satisfy far more people other than yourself.

Besides, we’re not looking for writers, we’re looking for storytellers. A love of creative writing will not help you achieve publication unless you can harness basic storytelling skills, such as narrative structure and plotting.

“My friends* tell me I should publish my work.”

*Delete and replace with 'children', 'grand children', 'my pupils'.

Be inspired but wary of encouragement from those close to you. It is not impossible that you have written a publishable book, but you need to balance well-meaning praise with a dose of commercial reality from a clued-up source such as a literacy consultancy or a writing coach.

“I have written this story to teach children the morals which I feel are badly lacking in today’s society.”

We are what we read, some might say. Arguably, subliminal messages about what we expect of children and of ourselves as adults are channelled into every children’s book ever written. Stories can be a reflection of and a challenge to the value systems that permeate our world, subconsciously or not. A great book can make us think, challenge and subvert; force us to raise and answer difficult questions about who we are and what we believe. Personally, we believe children deserve to be entertained without being preached to, particularly when the ‘moral’ agenda is so thinly and badly disguised. It’s the difference between implicit and explicit. Concentrate on telling a good story first, not on a ‘message’, ‘meaning’ or an ‘issue’.

“My protagonist is a boy wizard called Henry who turns into a vampire at night.”

Hmm….where have we read this before?

At worst it’s blatant plagiarism, at best it’s just very boring and unimaginative. The bandwagon does not visit Phoenix Yard. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging a trend - it demonstrates your commercial awareness - but you should always aim for originality. If you absolutely have to follow a trend, you need to at least build on and improve that trend – convince us that your take on the trend is different from and better than all other books published within the trend.

“I know you will be just as thrilled with this book as I am and will realise this book’s potential to sell millions of copies”

Any aspiring author who tells us this is nearly always over-estimating their work. Even in the unlikely event that our over-confident author has written a sellable book, it’s a tough old world, book publishing. Of course we would love your book to sell millions of copies, and we will work very hard to achieve the best sales possible. If publishers knew which books would and wouldn’t sell millions of copies, our jobs would be very easy and we would all be very rich. No editor, publicist or sales director is willing to manage grossly inflated expectations, or egos.

Sales figures often have a direct correlation to an author/illustrator’s willingness to promote their book. Touring bookshops; spending time at library events; not simply visiting schools but leading events and workshops; willingness to travel to the major book festivals across the UK. Promotional appearances, speeches, visits and events can be a lot of fun and working with children can be very satisfying, but you need high energy levels and bags of enthusiasm to combat days of long, tiring and often unpaid work. Red carpets are few and far between.

Recommended Reading

We can recommend two particularly helpful publications:

The Children's Writers' and Artists' Yearbook is an extremely popular guide containing complete listings of publishers and literary agents, and useful advice from industry experts. But a word of advice: The Children's Writers' and Artists' Yearbook is a brilliant starting point, but it is just that: a starting point. Don't submit to a publisher simply because they are listed in The Children's Writers' and Artists' Yearbook: do your homework first.

Write to be Published by successful author Nicola Morgan is fantastic for no-nonsense, honest, sensible, practical, down to earth advice on what it really takes to get published and how the publishing industry ticks. A much-needed reality injection for anyone serious about getting their work published.

And finally....

Please try not to be disappointed if we reject your work. We select only a very few titles a year from the thousands of submissions we receive. Good luck!