Writing Opportunity: Submission Guidelines

While we’re having fun doing some writing exercises, let’s roll up our sleeves and take a look at Kaeden Book’s Submission Guidelines.

For starters, they state they are an educational publisher. Do you know what this means? It means several things including:

1. They are NOT a trade book publisher. Trade book publishers produce books for the general public to buy. These are the books you find in your local bookstore such as Barnes and Nobles. Kaeden Books isn’t one of these publishers and chances are you won’t find their books at your local bookstore.

2. They publish books for teachers, librarians, and educators to buy. (Not parents or kids to buy.) You might find their books at a teacher’s supply store or in catalogs they send to schools.

3. Most educational publishers offer work-for-hire contracts instead of royalty-based contracts. This means that they purchase the rights to any manuscript they accept. It becomes their property and they can do anything they want with it. You can’t. This also means that they usually pay their authors a one-time flat fee. Of course, sometimes that may be different, but this is just a general thing most educational publishers do. So don’t send them a manuscript that is near and dear to your heart. Plan on working on a brand new manuscript that you can send to them that fits their guidelines and that they can purchase and keep as their own property. (That’s why we’re doing writing exercises along the way.)

Next, their guidelines state that they “specialize in early literacy books and beginning chapter books that support young readers.” Do you know what this means? Among other things, this can mean:

1. They like books that teach children to read.

2. They like books for the younger grade levels such as pre-kindergarten through second grade.

3. They like books that use grade-level vocabulary and specific sentence lengths.

Their guidelines also state that authors need to be familiar with guided reading, Reading Recovery (R), and reading intervention programs. If you’re not yet familiar with these, here are some resources to explore:

Reading Recovery

The Children’s Writer’s Word Book

Phonics from A to Z by Wiley Blevins

And my book, Yes! You Can Learn How to Write Beginning Readers and Chapter Books

Let me know if you have any questions about what we’ve looked at so far!

Filed under: Beginning Readers, Chapter Books, How-to Books for Writers