[Mynamewastaken Posts: 61 Status: Offline Doing whatever makes me happy!]

I've been researching unsolicited manuscripts and I see a lot of publishing companies that do this are outside the USA. DO you send your work out to these countries? Any success stories?

[iyerani Posts: 243 Status: Offline I love kids' books! WWW]

Mynamewastaken (love this name!) I have submitted in the past to agencies and editors in UK. Have not heard a peep.

[marla-lesage Posts: 376 Status: Offline Write. Illustrate. Revise.]

Canadian publishers are generally open but usually only publish Canadian authors due to government grants/funding. Does not seem to be the same for illustrators though.

[Debbie Vilardi Posts: 6,949 Status: Offline Language is so cool! WWW]

Some thoughts from someone who hasn't done this. Think about the logistics of promotion and marketing. Your book will be available in a country that you may not be able to get to to do school visits, etc. Think about taxes. It's easier for US publishers to work with US authors, especially when the authors have no track record. (Foreign rights sales for a book already out are another matter.) I wonder if the publishers from other countries would wonder whether everyone here had rejected your manuscript already.

(None of this applies for work-for-hire, where the author has sold all rights and often doesn't participate in promotion.)

And, yes, Canadian publishers almost always take only Canadian authors.

I hope the thoughts are helpful. I'm far from an expert on this.

[Mynamewastaken Posts: 61 Status: Offline Doing whatever makes me happy!]

Thank you everyone. Debbie you have been such a help- thank you!

[JulieM Posts: 947 Status: Offline WWW]

Australian publishers are sometimes open to subs. In my experience, it is very rare that a picture book (my genre) is accepted from an "unknown" writer. I think the chances of getting something else accepted are a little higher. (PBs cost the most to produce). In my experience, agents are very reluctant to rep PBs in Australia because of the very low chance of sale.