UPDATED NOV 21st, 2023: It has been brought to our attention that some authors who submitted to Ethicool, have been told their work is a potentially a good fit with revisions and directed to a portion of Ethicool’s site labelled Manuscript Assessment. We do not condone this, and feel this is unethical behavior. Which is why we’re not linking to the page. You can see a screenshot of the page below:
The options here for feedback range from $189 to $399. On most of the page itself there’s no mention of how this will effect your odds in terms of submitting to Ethicool, but in the email we have seen the line between the two is very clear. As part of the text proceeding the testimonials you can see that they very clearly state “Our manuscript Assessments have led to several authors being successfully signed, both with other publishing houses and Ethicool. ” There is also this telling testimonial at the bottom of the page.
If you’ve read many of our reviews over the years, you will know that many small publishing houses now offer editorial feedback or a self publishing imprint. While we don’t love this, we still review these publishers (and have had many authors who have had a good experience with them), as long as these publishers don’t re-direct authors from their traditional imprint to their editorial service or self publishing imprint. Most of the publishers we list that offer these services have an official policy in place that states they will not consider for traditional publication, work they have edited. There are clear ethical reasons for these policies.
Traditional Publishing, by definition, should not involve the author paying the publisher with the possible exception of reading fees (I’ve written more about this here). Ethicool is making it clear through their actions that they are not a traditional publisher.
I am very sorry I missed this earlier, and I don’t recommend working with them, based on this policy.
Ethicool Books is a picture book publisher focused on publishing books aimed at children age 8 and younger. They are still a relatively new press, they were founded in 2020 by a husband and wife team, Teigan Margetts and Stuart French, with the idea of creating children’s books that helps focus on telling stories that help kids understand how they can help change the world. You can learn more about this here. They have sustainable printing practices and participate in 1% for the Planet.
So far they have published about 12 books a year, and they plan to publish more. You can see their back catalogue here.
They have a beautiful website, although it is so extensive it can be a little tricky to navigate.
I first encountered them, because they are distributed through Publishers Group West. They mention on their site that they have extensive international distribution, but I don’t know who their other distributors are, at this point, but because they are based in Australia, it’s a good sign that they have a decent distributor in the US.
They have clear and detailed submission guidelines that they communicate here. along with a list of frequently asked questions where they make it clear that they are open to all authors no matter where they are based.
Please follow their submission guidelines carefully, and only submit if you feel like your work is a good fit. To learn more, go 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.
