PAL Membership

What is PAL?

PAL stands for "Published and Listed." When a publisher of books or magazines for children and young adults meets SCBWI's best practices criteria, it is considered a PAL publisher. Member books published by PAL publishers are eligible for the Crystal Kite and Golden Kite awards and may be sold at SCBWI events.

When an SCBWI member's work for children or young adults is published by an SCBWI-recognized PAL publisher, a member may change their membership category to PAL by taking the following steps: 

1. Click “My Home” in the upper right corner to go to your member profile page
2. Click “Add” next to “Books.” You’ll be prompted to fill in the information about your book.
3. Select your publisher from the dropdown publishers list. When you do this, your membership category will change to PAL if it isn’t already PAL.
4. Click the green “Save” button at the bottom of the page.

Only books for children and youth are eligible for PAL.

Once you have submitted a PAL inquiry, the SCBWI PAL inquiry committee will verify your publisher for possible inclusion in our market surveys. The purpose of the PAL inquiry is to request vetting of a publisher for PAL status. It does not approve individual books as PAL or creators as PAL members. A PAL review may take up to 45 business days. PAL inquiries sent on behalf of publishers already included in our list may not receive a response. There is no guarantee that any publisher will be granted PAL status, and publishers that no longer meet the requirements may be removed from PAL status.

PAL Publisher Guidelines

These guidelines are considered minimum qualifications. Additional factors may also determine whether a publisher is or is not 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. Publishers that offer traditional and self-publishing options within the same publishing house or imprint may not qualify for PAL.

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. The publisher must offer a means of broad distribution of the work to retail customers.

5. The publisher must have published 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) the publisher 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 it finds the publisher no longer meets PAL criteria.