November 11th, 2025: They were acquired by Random House. The leadership will remain the same for now. We do not know if they will close to unagented submissions or not. They have remained open so far. You can learn more here.
Sleeping Bear Press is a well regarded publisher of board books, picture books, and select middle grade readers. They offer advances to some authors. They have good regional distribution in the Midwest and ok distribution in North America. Their books have won a wide variety of awards, all of them are listed here.
Their website is easy to use and focused on selling books. They do offer teachers’ guides for many of their books, which is a good sign. Also you can read all of the editorial reviews of their books here, which is a wonderful and can give you a good idea about the details of what they publish. Their catalog is also very helpful. It is organized by age group and you can see it here.
They are open to submissions on a rolling basis, which means they can open and close to submissions without notice. Please check back at their website regularly if they are closed, they appear to be open the majority of the time.
All submissions must be made through post or email. They only contact submitters if they are interested in the book they submitted. They do not respond to queries regarding manuscripts. They also don’t give estimated response times, but a good rule of thumb is if you have not heard from a publisher in six months (and they don’t post response times), assume they are not interested. Learn more here.
Bio: Emily Harstone is the pen name of an author whose work has been published internationally by a number of respected journals. She is a professional submissions adviser. You can follow her on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/emilyharstone/
