Little Island operates an open submissions policy. That means you don't need an agent, you don't need to have published before, you don't need a million followers on Instagram... If your book is good enough, that's good enough!
So please, be bold, send us your book!
But first – please read the guidelines below.
How to submit and what to expect
- Only send submissions (books) to us as Word documents to submissions@littleisland.ie
- When submitting please send three things:
- Your book, or a few sample chapters of it
- A summary of the whole book, which includes a description of the plot (or the non-fiction content) and the age group you have written it for
- Some information about yourself
- Please don't send us anything by post. We can't return anything that comes to us by post.
- We get a lot of submissions. So, that means we have to absolutely love a book before we can even think about publishing it. If we don’t love it, we won’t publish it – but that doesn’t mean it’s not good. We might have liked it. A bit. Or a lot. But we just didn’t absolutely love it.
- We look at everything. We reply to everyone. But it takes a lot of time so please allow at least 3 months before giving us a nudge.
- We are a publisher for children and teens only. Please do not send us anything written for adults.
What we are looking for
- Books with commercial potential. Our first concern is always with quality. But we need to keep the lights on, and publishing is a very tough industry for small companies. Not every book will be a bestseller, but we need to feel that every book has the potential.
- We are especially keen on finding writers that reflect modern Ireland in all its variety. That means we're looking for writers who come from outside the Irish literary mainstream – on account of their class, race, ethnicity, sexuality or anything else. Ireland needs new stories.
- Tomorrow’s classics. OK, easier said than done! But when we read a submission we ask ourselves: would a child reading this book today love it so much that in years to come they’ll want a child in their life to read it too? So, we want to publish books that will last.
- Great writing (like Wolfstongue), fresh and innovative ideas (like The Philosophy Resistance Squad), new approaches (like Tangleweed and Brine), super storytelling (like The Wordsmith).
- Books for the whole world. We publish the best Irish books for children everywhere. Ideally we want submissions that we feel we can sell in other countries as well as Ireland.
- Books that put young readers first. Books that children and teenagers will find fun, funny, intriguing, moving, thrilling, enlightening, entertaining ...
What we are not looking for
- Books that have previously been self-published or sequels to self-published books.
- Individual short stories. (Your book should be a book, even if it is short.)
- Books that treat children as if they are under-cooked adults. We publish books that respect young readers as people in their own right.
