New Unsolicited Manuscript Guidelines

We've been struggling with the work associated with the hundreds of unsolicited manuscripts we receive at Omnibus for a very long time now and finally the time has come to stop. We just don't have enough time to enter, read, return and re-enter the looming pile anymore. But rather than stop reading we have decided to change the rules.  So please pay close attention!

If you look on the web here you will see that we have totally re-jigged our guidelines.

1. NO manuscripts will be returned, regardless of whether or not they include return postage. So don't include a stamped self-addressed envelope anymore.

2. You will ONLY hear from us if you are successful. If you don't hear within three months assume you were unsuccessful and try elsewhere.

3. We will not let you know your manuscript arrived. Assume the postie is good at his or her job and will deliver it safely or return it to you if you've put your address on it.

4. Don't call us to ask if your work has been read yet. We haven't got time to answer any queries and we can't anyway because we no longer enter unsolicited work onto a database.

5. Don't send anything original (as in you don't keep a copy) because we will be putting all unsuccessful work into a secure paper recycling bin. And don't worry, this is a very safe system. No one will be able to read/steal your work. It gets shredded in a giant commercial shredder. We pay for this system.

6. There is absolutely no advantage in sending your submission with a cover letter from an Assessment Agency. We highly recommend that applicants avoid this expensive process completely, as the letters make no difference whatsoever in our final decision on whether work will be published or not.

BUT WE WILL READ EVERYTHING!  We always did, we always will. That's how we discovered Marcus Zusak, Michael Gerard Bauer, Lyn Lee and a host of other award-winning super-successful writers. We know you're in that pile somewhere ... and we will find you if you are.

If your work is already here with its stamped self-addressed envelope then we will faithfully return it to you but in a very short while we will not. All the rest of the guidelines are up on the web - go see for yourself.

Every night I get on my knees and pray for a monster best-seller to appear in the unsolicited pile. If the nuns were right then I probably shouldn't hold my breath. But as my dear mother likes to say - live in hope, even if you die in despair.

A note from your Conductor

Holding Out For Wonderful

Welcome to the New Year at Onyabus.  I've been remiss in posting - there is never enough time in the working day to sit and think but I am determined to Do Better.

Today has been a day of emails, interviews and, sigh, unsoliciteds.  The pile of unsolicited manuscripts is awfully high and awfully lacking in genius.  Would that it were otherwise.  Where are all the undiscovered diamonds of the children's lit world I wonder - those marvellous manuscripts from writers so talented they cannot help but get offers from all and sundry to publish their work?  I am probably the only children's publisher in the world who actually sifts through the unsolicited pile myself but I read on with a somewhat sinking feeling and less hope in my heart than when I began this morning.  There is always hope at the start of the reading pile.  There is always a need for chocolate or a stiff drink at the end.  I see we have been sent more stories about fairies...FYI we don't publish fairy books.  More stories about environmental disasters - no, not for us, thankyou.    Lots and lots of stories that the writers felt were picture books but are nothing more than lists of actions undertaken by a too-twee child.  Dog and cat stories - mostly heroic dogs and recalitrant cats.  No thanks. Four manuscripts were purportedly written by very small children whose grasp of language is uncannily adult but whose stories are woeful.  Sorry. Your teacher, aunt, mother or father ought to put the stories you write in a drawer and give them to you on your 21st - not post them to us. There is a smattering of stories about desperate teenagers whose lives are forever blighted by First World Problems like their hair, their boyfriend or their mother.  No thanks. We even have manuscripts about god, creationism and good calories. 

I am beginning to slump. 

Or even become slightly more deranged than usual..

How I look when deranged

Please someone send me a fabulous story - something utterly original.
In case I sound terribly ungrateful for the many manuscripts that fly in our door each day I am not.  I am just very, very picky. Markus Zusak's first published book, The Underdog came from the pile - such a wonderful story.  So original.  So beautifully written.  We snapped it up all those years ago and now look at him!  Then there was Michael Gerard Bauer, the perfect gentleman of publishing whose first book, The Running Man, came off the unsolicited pile too and went on to win so many awards they scarcely all fit on the cover.  Lyn Lee wote Pog - an unsolicited manuscript that won a swag of prizes.  We can spot a good one when we see it.  It just seems to me that there are a vast number of people out there who can't write but do anyway (and good on them, just don't send it to us) and an equal number of people who write what we call the OK Book; it's OK but it isn't wonderful. 

I'm holding out for wonderful.

A note from your Conductor xx

What I wish was on my pile

Publishing is a very strange profession.  We make judgements each day about what is worth publishing and what is not and frequently the ones we reject turn up somewhere else where they are loved and supported and made into books.  So why is something rejected? Well, in our case we reject work that just isn't original enough, or literary enough, or funny enough, or serious enough, or clever enough.  Or possibly all of the above. Just as all readers do, we read with the hope that something magical will happen –- we won't want to stop reading. Lunch or coffee or that walk you meant to take today will just be forgotten in the absolute pleasure of a wonderful, captivating story with characters that capture you and settings so real you can walk there instead.

Where are those stories, by the way?  Please would all the writers who have one like that in their bottom drawer get it out now and send it to us? Just this week we have taken on three stories from the unsolicited pile. It does happen. Three writers who took a chance and sent their manuscript to us, fingers crossed, along with a self-addressed envelope just in case.

More than anything I wish we could publish some more writers with different ethnic backgrounds -- there must be some great children's writers out there with a different point of view, surely? 

On  a different note, I spent Easter with my family on the Mornington Peninsula -- very nice.  Heronswood Garden was just beautiful and I spent way too much time in the garden shop, as usual. Rolled about loudly on the lush green lawn (hmm, avoid cliches ...) with my grandson looking variously for his ears, nose, knees and belly button. What fun to play like a child. I thought about picture books as I read to him that weekend. He likes anything mechanical: trucks, fire engines, ambulances, but discovered when I tried to take him to the fireworks night that he doesn't like 'fire cracks'.  Now there's some very original and evocative language I like ...

A note from your Conductor xx

Dangerously low light

The stack of books on my desk in front of the window now obscures all sunlight from my room.  I am afraid of it.  I think at night the pages turn by themselves and there is a low moan I have heard more than once in the late afternoon.  That could be me as my head hits the desk, however.

Must drink more water.  Eat less sugar.  Walk every now and again further than between the fridge and the computer.

Right now I am thinking about covers constantly so the link I was sent this week is fresh in my mind. And then inside that link is a further link I like.

It’s somehow comforting to know I am part of an enormous grinding wheel that crushes everyone at some point.  I am but a mote of dust against its burr.  I feel no pain.




Photo by austinevan, flickr.com

Some thoughts from our Driver.