Pan Macmillan is calling on writers to submit their work – for one week only. Pan Macmillan SA’s annual open submissions period will be from June 18 to 24
Pan Macmillan South Africa does not usually accept unsolicited manuscripts – with the exception of their annual open submissions period, which will be from June 18 to 24.
Guidelines for submitting your work to Pan Macmillan
- Pan Macmillan SA 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, 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 synopsis of the plot (one page or less) 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.
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.