Children's Book Submissions/Competition

[Zilla1]

Chicken House have an annual competition run in conjunction with The Times for those sat on or able to finish a children's (middle/chapter or YA, I think) manuscript. I think it also runs as their submission vehicle. The deadline has been extended to 01/06/2020.

www.chickenhousebooks.com/submissions/

Good luck.

Is it normal to pay to submit? I’ve only done one open submission competition and it didn’t require payment. It’s only £18, but I want to check it’s not like modelling portfolios where I’d they charge it’s a scam!

I don't know the company, but it looks as if they don't accept unsolicited ms, apart from running this competition annually, and it's normal for competitions to have a fee. So, if you have an agent, you can submit to them at any point for nothing, but if you're unagented, entering the competition for a fee is your only shot with this

Thank you, that’s reassuring.

I’ve looked through their about information, and apparently they published Maze Runner, which definitely suggests they’re legit.

I'd never pay to enter any kind of competition tbh. Stinks of a scam to me. Or one of those things where everyone wins the prize and you have to pay to have it published or whateverm

My understanding is that in the UK, no reputable agent or publisher would expect payment for submission. Some/many but not all legitimate competitions for first novels and screenplays require payment.

I have no connection with Chicken House though intend entering this year.

Anyone is free to check my posting history and see I've posted about other competitions (off the top of my head, Curtis Brown's, BBC's, Kindle Storyteller, Daily Mail, CWA, Wilbur and Niso Smith...) in the past. I'd not thought about it before but I think all of those were free to enter.

This is a competition that I've posted and I considered it legitimate even though it requires a payment. It is associated with The Times (The London Times for those outside the UK). As a PP have said, this publisher has a legitimate place in the market and is not as far as I can tell a vanity press.

I can see the issue as I think it seems to be Chicken House's main vehicle for submissions too but it is, I understand, primarily a competition with a prize. To be fair to them, most significant UK publishers don't seem to accept unagented submissions at all.

Good luck.

I'd never pay to enter any kind of competition tbh. Stinks of a scam to me. Or one of those things where everyone wins the prize and you have to pay to have it published or whateverm

Nonsense. It's perfectly possible to research a competition to see if it's legit -- look up the judges, previous winners and judges, whether those winners have gone on to publish successfully.

And some of the big, long-established ones charge an entry fee, as they have to pay the first 'filter readers' who wade through thousands of submissions, before a much smaller number are handed on to the judges -- that's not much of a time commitment if it's flash fiction or poetry, but for the first three chapters of a novel, it's a lot. And the intention is probably also to put off the people who fling in the unedited, unspellchecked stream of consciousness they managed on the first day of the last NaNoWriMo.

Zilla1, thanks for posting.

It's not a scam, Chicken House is a well known publisher. I thought about submitting last year, but I wasn't ready and I probably won't be ready with book two this year.

Zilla, sorry if it seemed like I was implying you were a scammer! You’ve been really helpful to me on other threads, so I definitely don’t think that. I was just uncertain about whether charging was normal in the industry.

Thanks for heads up might give this a try. Hope they don’t mind if you’re also submitting to agents

MrsFiona,

No need to apologise. I'm glad you asked as, in retrospect, I think it's helpful to clarify about charging/competitions/agent and publisher submissions given some pseudo publishers/vanity presses (not Chicken House) do charge people.

Good luck with your publisher submission today.

Just submitted!

I’ve done three submissions in the last month, Guppy, Penguin WriteNow, and Chicken House.

I’m not holding out hope for Guppy - my book is definitely on the upper age limit for what they publish and I hadn’t really grasped the importance of the query letter for that submission.

Good luck, MrsFiona. Will you or have you sent to any agents or tried self-publishing?

I’m waiting on a few more beta readers, so I’m waiting until I’ve had their feedback and made the relevant changes before I try querying agents.

If I don’t get anywhere with agents I’ll go for self publishing.