Writers! Pan Macmillan SA is accepting unsolicited manuscripts in June – take advantage of the opportunity

Good news for prospective authors! From 18–24 June 2019, Pan Macmillan SA is accepting unsolicited manuscripts.

Up-and-coming writers often ask us where they can submit their work. Here’s your answer!

‘Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.’ – Orson Scott

Check out the submission guidelines here:

Pan Macmillan SA submission guidelines

Source: Pan Macmillan SA

Pan Macmillan South Africa unfortunately does not accept unsolicited manuscripts, with the exception of our annual open submissions period, which will be from the 18th to the 24th of June 2019.

Guidelines for submitting your work to Pan Macmillan

Pan Macmillan South Africa publishes books for the general market in the following categories:

General fiction
Literary fiction
Memoir/biography/autobiography
General non-fiction

Due to the priorities of our local publishing programme, Pan Macmillan will unfortunately not consider submissions for poetry, plays, religion and self-help and children’s books.

As an African publishing house, we believe in publishing books by African authors and/or books that deal with contemporary African themes and issues. We are extremely selective in accepting works for publication. Only works of the highest writing standard, level of originality and market appeal will be considered.

All submissions should contain:

A covering letter and 500-word synopsis along with three completed chapters of your manuscript (in either Word or pdf format).
For non-fiction: a detailed chapter outline with the first three chapters (preferably) or several selected finished chapters. Please do not submit the entire manuscript as we will request this from you if we are interested in seeing more of your submission.
For fiction: a brief (one page or less) synopsis of the plot and the first three chapters (preferably). Please do not submit the entire manuscript.
A note on the author’s view of the potential market/readership of the book.
A note on any competing books and what might distinguish the author’s book from these.
The author’s contact details.

All material must be typed. Please ensure all pages are numbered consecutively. No handwritten submissions will be considered.

Please send all submissions to submissions@panmacmillan.co.za. Please write the title of your work as the email subject. Unfortunately, we will not consider submissions sent before or after this period.

Timeline

Please note that if you have not heard back from Pan Macmillan within eight weeks, consider your submission to have been unsuccessful. Due to the number of submissions received, Pan Macmillan is not able to enter into correspondence regarding unsuccessful submissions.