Publisher & Author Submissions

Although we have grown considerably since our first year, we stay close to our grassroots origins, and our primary nominations come from the general public. Why? Because we want to hear from readers what books they loved.

Most of our nominations come from adults working with children or bloggers with an interest in children’s literature. However, sometimes good books get overlooked during our public nomination period, so we added a period for publishers and authors to submit their own books after the public nomination period is ended.

We want to make sure we are considering every book we should be considering for the award. The Publisher/Author submission period is your opportunity to have a book considered that may have been overlooked in the public nomination period.

Please note that books you submit cannot be promoted as nominees. We reserve that title for books nominated by someone not connected with the book. In Cybils Awards lingo, submitting a book just means letting us know that you’d like it considered. Every book submitted has a fair and equal chance of winning, and some publisher submissions have been selected as finalists or winners in past years. Our primary criteria are kid appeal and literary merit. We’re looking for those books which best combine both.

You may submit titles for consideration between October 1-15. Books nominated by the public do not need to be resubmitted by the publisher, although we do welcome review copies of those titles.

Whether or not you are submitting titles, please make sure we have your contact information for our database by sending it to Sheila Ruth at publishers@cybils.com so that we can contact you regarding your nominated titles. You will receive occasional email notification - no more than 4-6 messages a year - with award-cycle dates and information important to publishers.

Instructions for Submitting

  1. Books must be published in the U.S or Canada with a publication date between October 16 of last year and October 15 of the current year.
  2. Books must be widely available to be eligible. Books only available from the author or publisher website are not eligible.
  3. We do accept self-published titles.
  4. Ebooks not also available in print are ONLY accepted in Poetry, YA SF, YA Fiction, and High School Nonfiction. For all other categories, there must be a print edition, although we can accept eBooks for review copies in all categories.
  5. Download the 2024 submission spreadsheet here.
  6. Fill out the spreadsheet exactly as instructed. Please do not include any extra information. The spreadsheet is processed by a computer, and extra information will confuse the loading program. Spreadsheets filled out incorrectly will be returned.
  7. The category should be selected from the drop-down list in the field so that it exactly matches one of our category names:
    • Board Books
    • Elementary/Middle-Grade Fiction
    • Elementary/Middle-Grade Graphic Novels
    • Elementary/Middle-Grade Speculative Fiction
    • Elementary Nonfiction
    • Fiction Picture Books
    • High School Nonfiction
    • Middle-Grade Nonfiction
    • Novels In Verse
    • Poetry Collections
    • Young Adult Graphic Novels
    • Young Adult Fiction
    • Young Adult Speculative Fiction
  8. You may optionally enter X/Twitter (or BlueSky) and Instagram handles you would like tagged in any publicity into the spreadsheet (Please do not include the @ at the beginning of the handle)
  9. You may submit up to 10% of your books published in 2024, rounded. (Books nominated by the general public don’t count towards the 10%.) If you published fewer than 10 books, you may still submit one book.
  10. Please save the spreadsheet as an Excel (.xlsx) file. Apple Pages files and Google docs will not be accepted. If exporting from Apple Pages, please do not check the box to "Include a Summary Spreadsheet."
  11. Send the spreadsheet between October 1-15 to publishers@cybils.com. Spreadsheets received before October 1 will not be accepted.
  12. We will reach out to arrange for review copies. You should hear from us by the end of October. Please be patient; our process takes time but ensures that we only request review copies that we really need.

More Information

In accordance with the goal of the CYBILS Awards to support diversity, equity and inclusion through its awarded books, category chairs are empowered to mark books as ineligible which are inconsistent with our DEI policy as stated in our inclusivity goals and guidelines.