Manuscript Guidelines

What We Publish

We are happy to accept manuscripts, but as we are sent so many it is worth considering whether they will fit in with our programme before sending them.

Our books cover many different subjects, but all are written within the context of a diverse and international society. We try to reflect various family structures and avoid gender, age, disability or racial stereotyping. 

We use a number of independent illustrators and do not require manuscripts to arrive with illustrations.

Board Books

Our programme is mainly focused on EYFS. We publish a large number of board books for babies and toddlers. Board books are generally 12 pages and reflect experiences relevant to the age group. They have very few words. Many of our books contain an element of interaction, lift-up flaps, pop-ups, dials etc. When this interaction is tactile it is always an integral part of the story.

Picture Books

Picture books are highly illustrated; generally they are 32 pages with a maximum of 1,500 words of text. They are always child centred. We are particularly interested in own-voice narratives and by authors from under-represented groups.

We also publish a limited number of information books for up to nine years old, which are usually engineered and interactive. We do not publish children's novels.

Before submitting your work, we suggest that you look through the books on our website to see if your style fits into our programme.

We are unable to consider AI-generated stories or submissions via the post.

How to submit

If you've taken a look at our programme and think your book concept would be a good fit for us, please submit a cover letter and your manuscript as an attachment and send to: office@childs-play.com

(Accepted formats: PDF or Word Document.)

Feedback

We are lucky enough to receive such a high volume of manuscripts every month, however; this means we are unfortunately unable to offer criticism on individual projects. If your concept has taken our interest, we'll be in touch. If you haven't heard from us within 12 weeks, then please assume that we didn't consider your submission a suitable fit for our programme.