Updated May 17th, 2023, they are no longer open to submissions from not Australians or/New Zealanders for First Fridays.
Allen & Unwin is a large independent Australian Press that is open to submissions on a wide range of topics. They have won a number of Australian publisher awards. They accept based on pitches, and have a system known as the “Friday Pitch” which ensures that at least one editor reviews each unsolicited pitch.
Allen & Unwin has great distribution in Australia and has published a large number of best-selling books on a wide range of topics. One of their focuses is Australian memoirs (although clearly that is only open to Australian authors). They also run a prestigious literary contest that is focuses on launching Australian authors. They also have a nonfiction division focus on New Zealand (that only accepts submissions from that country). Outside of these focused areas they seem open to pitches from authors of other nationalities.
All pitches must be made through their electronic submission system. One of the things I like about their guidelines is that in each of the categories they mention an example of a book (or books) that has done well after being accepted through this system. Some of the areas where they are currently open to submissions include their children’s and young adult division (which publishes about 80 books a year), as well as literary and commercial fiction (although not in all genres) and nonfiction for adults.
To learn more, please go to their submission guideline page here. All of the pages have detailed information and you should read all the guidelines carefully before submitting.
Bio: Emily Harstone is the pen name of an author whose work has been published internationally by a number of respected journals. She is a professional submissions adviser and spends much of her time researching manuscript publishers. You can follow her on Facebook.
