Welcome to the Children’s Branch

Grow Your Children’s Book with Rootstock

Rootstock Publishing’s Children’s Branch offers a collaborative partnership to bring your stories to young readers. We will guide your work from draft to a designed, edited, and finished book with global distribution that is available for purchase where all books and ebooks are sold. 

Books in our Children’s Branch:

Submission Guidelines

We accept picture books, young adult, and middle grade novels. (Please note we do not accept board books, easy readers, or early chapter books.) We prefer contemporary, historical and mystery; we’ll look only at strong, character-driven fantasy and science fiction. Before submitting, please read the descriptions below. We will not look at manuscripts that exceed the maximum word count.

Young Adult

  • Your manuscript should feature main characters who are teenagers. No more than 80,000 words.

Middle Grade

  • Your manuscript should feature main characters who are between the ages of ten and thirteen. No more than 50,000 words.

Picture Book

  • Your manuscript should be written as a read-aloud for children under the age of eight. The ideal length is between 200 and 600 words. Nonfiction may be up to 1,000 words. 

  • Know your page turns (i.e., make sure your story fits to the standard length of 32 pages, including a copyright page, title page, and any backmatter).

  • Illustrations are not required to submit; we can suggest an illustrator for you to work with. 

The author retains an 80% royalty rate. Your contract includes Full-Service Publishing and Marketing. Please see this page to understand which services are covered.

Submit Your Manuscript

Submit through Submittable or contact us for accessible options. The $15 reading fee will help pay for our professional staff of readers, as well as cover the costs of Submittable.