Submissions

Submission guidelines for children's books in English or Bengali

illustration of two kids and monster
Illustration by Rakibul Hasan Palash

Thank you for your interest in submitting your work to Guba Publishing.  We are an independent bilingual publishing company that publishes children’s picture books, board books, ebooks and other printed material in English and Bengali.

We are looking to publish books that belong to any of the following categories:

Board books (for ages 0 to 24 months) – simple introductory concepts, vivid illustrations, minimal text

Early Picture books (for ages 2 to 5 years) – Simple stories with no complicated twists. Fun to read out loud. Illustrations are equally (if not more) important in the storytelling process.

Picture books (for ages 4 to 8 years) - Good stories, well told. No explicit lessons or morals. Story should have credible characters, an engaging plot and strong writing. The point of view should invite the child reader into the story. Thoughtful illustrations that work together with the text to tell the story.

From the above categories, we normally create board books and flashcards in-house, and acquire stories from external authors and illustrators to create picture books. We accept submissions from both writers and illustrators. Please review the submissions guidelines below before sending in your work.

For writers:

  • We accept manuscripts in either English or Bengali

  • Maximum word count of:

    • 200 words for board books

    • 500 words for early picture books

    • 700 words for picture books

  • Manuscripts must be submitted either as a PDF or in a Word document. We will not read submissions that are on an external links/websites or in a DropBox folder.

  • File size no bigger than 2Mb

  • It is NOT necessary to provide illustrations with the story text

  • If the story is illustrated, we will review text and art separately (Note that we may be interested in the story but not the artwork, or vice versa)

 

For illustrators:

  • Illustrators are welcome to submit samples of their artwork.

  • PDF or Jpeg files are preferred. It is easier for us to browse through a PDF than open multiple jpegs.

  • Total file size should be less than 5Mb.

  • We are happy to look at an external webpage, however we will not download any content. We won’t download any WeTransfer (or similar) files.

  • If you have a website, please include it in the body of your email.

  • If you are an author/illustrator, please also read the section for writers before submitting.

Send to: info@gubapublishing.com

If we are interested in your submission, you can expect to hear from us within 3 months after we receive your submission. Since we are a small operation, we are unable to respond to all submissions and will not be responding to an unsolicited submission unless interested in publishing it. Thank you for your understanding.