Creston Books is small press focused on publishing picture books and select novels. They were founded in 2013 by Marissa Moss, the author of the Amelia’s Notebook series. Creston Books was established to fill a gap in the picture book market and to focus on diverse books. They have published many award-winning and banned books over the years. Authors that have debuted with them have found real ongoing industry success.

They are distributed by Lerner Publishing Group. There is a great interview with the founder, Marissa Moss on Lerner’s blog here. If you are serious about submitting to them, I highly encourage you to read it. You can get a feel for what they publish here. I have encountered a number of their books before at the library and at the local children’s bookstore. Please spend time with the books they’ve published before submitting to them.

You can submit no more than one project a month to them. They ask that you “paste or include the text of picture books or first chapters of novels in the body of your email rather than as an attachment”. PDFs showing art as well as text are fine, but text file attachments will not be read. They also have great additional advice you can and should read here.

Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The 2023 Guide to Manuscript Publishers. She regularly teaches three acclaimed courses on writing and publishing at The Writer’s Workshop at Authors Publish. You can follow her on Facebook here.