PAL Publisher Guidelines
These guidelines are considered minimum qualifications; additional factors may also determine whether a publisher is eligible for PAL.
1. The author/illustrator shall not have paid any money to the publisher for consideration of their work, nor for the publication, marketing, editing and/or distribution of their work, nor any other payment in order to produce their work in any format. This eliminates all forms of vanity publishing\, subsidy publishing\, and hybrid publishing\, including agreements in which publication costs are taken from the creator’s royalties.
2. The publisher\, whether traditional or new media\, must provide a professional editorial process prior to publication\, at no charge to the author/illustrator.
3. The author/illustrator must not be required to purchase copies of their own books.
4. There must exist a means of broad distribution to the retail customer.
5. The publisher must publish works from at least five authors and/or illustrators who are not related to each other. Thus\, if there are several illustrators but only one author (or vice versa) it will not qualify.
6. The publisher must show a consistent track record of publishing works for a children’s/Young Adult audience.
7. The publisher\, whether traditional or new media\, provides a means of marketing at no cost to the author/illustrator.
SCBWI retains the right to disqualify a publisher from PAL if we find after approval that it no longer meets the criteria.