The General Publishing team at Penguin Group (Australia) is keen and excited to read new work from Australian authors, and as such we’ve developed the Monthly Catch. For the first week of every month, we throw our doors open to unsolicited manuscripts. In this time period (the 1st to the 7th of every month), please send through submissions based on the guidelines below.
We are only accepting submissions electronically – all hardcopy submissions will be recycled. And we are only accepting submissions in the first week of every month; anything that comes through outside of this time will not be considered.
We are not currently considering poetry, educational textbooks or plays/scripts. We do not accept submissions intended for children and young adult audiences.
For books for children and young adults, please see the separate submission instructions below.
When you send through your submission, you’ll receive an automatic email acknowledging receipt. All manuscripts are carefully read and assessed, but we can only respond to those who are successful. If we do not contact you within three months of submission, please assume that we have decided not to pursue your manuscript. No further correspondence will be entered into.
While we are unable to give feedback on every manuscript we receive, there are many avenues to help writers develop their manuscripts. See our advice for authors page for a collection of practical suggestions.
Attach your manuscript and a short synopsis (of no more than 300 words) as separate Word documents and send via email to monthly.catch@au.penguingroup.com
In the subject line of your email, please state the title of your book, whether your book is fiction or non-fiction, and then genre (eg Heiress in Love: Fiction/Romance or The Address Book: Non-Fiction/Memoir).
Please include in the body of your email the following information:
- Title
- Brief summary (two or three sentences)
- Brief author bio (two or three sentences)
- Any previous publishing history and/or any writing awards you’ve received.
- Where would your book sit in the marketplace – i.e. what books would you see as comparison titles to yours, what authors are similar to you, who is the intended audience for your book, etc.
- Has this proposal been sent to other publishers?
- Have you previously submitted this, or a similar, proposal to Penguin? If so, please give details.
