World Book, the established publisher of encyclopedias and other works of nonfiction, is the parent company of Incentive Publications. Incentive is open to direct submissions and focuses on publishing work for children. They are only interested in educational books. The books they publish seem designed to use in classrooms, so that’s important to keep in mind. They are very much a niche publisher, but worth knowing about if you work in their niche.
It is easy to get a good feel for what they publish by going here. I found it most helpful to scan down to the shop by series and grade options on the right hand side. They don’t publish very many books per year, but the ones they publish seem to have good distribution and support.
Their submission guidelines are some of the sparsest I have ever seen and are as follows:
Incentive Publications is always looking for talented authors and illustrators with a love of entertaining and educating children. If you have a manuscript that you would like considered, please email it to incentive@worldbook.com
I have not seen their contract, so please do keep that in mind.
To learn more or to submit, please visit their website here.
Emily Harstone is the author of many popular books, including The Authors Publish Guide to Manuscript Submissions, The 2019 Guide to Manuscript Publishers, Submit, Publish, Repeat, and The Authors Publish Guide to Children’s and Young Adult Publishing.
She occasionally teaches a course on manuscript publishing, as well as a course on publishing in literary journals.
