Library For All
Library For All is an Australian not for profit. We’ve developed and launched a globally available free digital library to provide books to communities where history, poverty or remoteness are everyday barriers to accessing knowledge. Our library serves a unique, curated collection of engaging content created by an international publishing team. We work tirelessly to publish children’s books that are high quality, age appropriate and culturally relevant for the communities that we serve.
The majority of the books in our library are written for communities, by communities. We source stories through writers’ workshops we run in countries like PNG and Laos, ensuring people get a chance to share the special stories from their own regions with kids who are learning to read. But to grow a large and varied library, we also thrive on donated stories from authors around the world. Many generous and talented Write Links members have supported our mission!
Authors tell us they enjoy being able to make a concrete contribution to a charity – as opposed to donating money with no guarantee of how it will be used, for example. They like the fact that the stories we publish are going straight into the hands of eager and grateful readers. Having recently visited schools in PNG myself, I can assure our authors that these kids are blown away by our books!
The majority of the books in our library are written for communities, by communities. We source stories through writers’ workshops we run in countries like PNG and Laos, ensuring people get a chance to share the special stories from their own regions with kids who are learning to read. But to grow a large and varied library, we also thrive on donated stories from authors around the world. Many generous and talented Write Links members have supported our mission!
Authors tell us they enjoy being able to make a concrete contribution to a charity – as opposed to donating money with no guarantee of how it will be used, for example. They like the fact that the stories we publish are going straight into the hands of eager and grateful readers. Having recently visited schools in PNG myself, I can assure our authors that these kids are blown away by our books!
We are not driven by the ‘marketability’ of books, which means we can accept stories that might not make it out of the slush pile in a commercial publisher. But every story still undergoes structural editing and, importantly, ‘cultural editing’ to ensure it is suitable for our collection. Authors can be confident that publishing with LFA is a credible opportunity and a worthy addition to their writing portfolio.
When we’ve accepted and edited a manuscript, we match it with an illustrator and it progresses quite quickly to publication in our app; usually within 3 months. For the author, there won’t be a lot of collaboration with the illustrator, but we will share ‘sneak peeks’ of draft illustrations. Every author receives a complimentary hard copy of their book.
Right now, we’ve reached our limit for new manuscripts for this financial year, but there will be more publishing opportunities in future. As a general rule, we look for fiction and factual books, picture book manuscripts and early reader chapter books for children 4-10 years old. All our stories must be culturally acceptable to our predominantly Asia-Pacific reader base, but editors can help with this.
Authors and illustrators who might be interested can subscribe to our newsletter, follow us on social media or join our new Library For All Bookclub closed Facebook group for updates.
Happy to answer questions at any time!
Dr Lara Cain Gray
Specialist Librarian (Content Strategy and Publishing)
Library For All
lara@libraryforall.org.au
libraryforall.org.au
Comments
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Norah Colvin
Library For All is a fabulous project. I’m pleased to have heard about it and have an opportunity of supporting it.