Submissions
Calling all homeschoolers, homeschooling parents, writers who know how real homeschoolers actually live, illustrators, and cover designers!
You know you have it in you!
Yes, a novel. That’s what we’re talking about.
Do Life Right, Inc. proudly announces that we are now accepting manuscript submissions for publication and illustration samples for potential future cover artwork. Do Life Right, Inc. publishes children’s chapter and YA fictional books about realistic homeschoolers in all settings. We do not presently accept picture books or early readers, but hope to in the future. Please check back.
We do not accept non-fiction at all. There are presently hundreds of publishing companies who publish many great non-fiction titles, but none (other than us) who exclusively publish homeschooling children’s and YA books. We know homeschoolers! This is our specialty. 
Manuscript Guidelines:
- Must be about realistic fictional homeschoolers from the year 2000 or beyond. We do not accept characters set in the distant past, but would consider stories with characters from the present or future who visit the past.
- Must not be overtly religious or have an entire storyline based on religion (characters can certainly believe their beliefs, but we don’t want stories that try to convert readers to religions they aren’t interested in). Manuscripts may contain aspects of any real or imagined religion.
- Must not contain relationships of hatred (amongst siblings, so-called “friends”, or especially parent/child). These are not realistic characteristics of real homeschooling families of today. If you have the main character constantly putting down his sibling, we won’t publish your manuscript.
- Must be edited to the best of your ability. We expect all accepted manuscripts to be professionally edited before final acceptance. As with all publishing companies, we will do internal edits also.
- Must be double spaced, 12 point, readable font. Industry standards.
- Must be complete. We do not accept submissions based on partials, but we request partials only for our first read. Dazzle us!
- We currently accept all genres which fit into children’s fiction or young adult fiction: mystery, science fiction, romance, etc. Content must be G, PG, or PG-13. When in doubt, leave it out.
- We do not require exclusive submissions on partials. Our turnaround is 3 months. If you have not heard from us after that period of time, we are not interested in your manuscript. We correspond by e-mail only. If we request the full manuscript, we require a 2-4 week exclusive depending on the length.
- Synopses aren’t necessary, but please send a query letter containing: your real name, your real location, an overview of your story, why you think we’d like it and how it meshes with our line, and the status it is in. We do not discriminate based on anything, but do require that all of our guidelines be met. We reserve the right to reject manuscripts at any time.
- Please submit to us only if you have a willingness and desire to work with a relatively brand-new publishing company. As of today, we only have two books out. While our plan is to grow BIG, there will certainly be bumps and wrong turns along the way. You need to have the stamina to go with the flow on this.
If your manuscript does not meet these guidelines, it will be automatically rejected without being fully read. E.g. if on page 1 your main character is talking about school and/or how much they hate their parents, we won’t read any further.
Thank you and we look forward to reading your submissions!
Illustrators and Cover Designers:
Do Life Right, Inc. is currently compiling a catalog of future potential illustrators. If you are interested in being included, please send a brief e-mail with links to some of your work, your current pricing, and your availability to query at do life right inc dot com. We keep a catalog of illustrators and contact individual ones based on the needs of each individual manuscript. Since each story is so drastically different, we’ll need a wide variety of talents here! We pay standard market rates.
Questions? Please send them here. While we do not respond to every inquiry, we keep a list of the most FAQs and add them to our list.
Authors are paid in royalties only. Illustrators are paid a flat fee rate. Agented and unagented authors are welcome to submit.
Still interested? Please send a query addressed to Lisa Bentley at query at do life right inc dot com or fill out our Contact Form. If we are interested, we will ask you to send a partial or full to a different e-mail address. All query e-mails with attachments will be automatically deleted. We only accept manuscripts via e-mail, not mail.
Interested in joining the Do Life Right, Inc. team? We are currently looking for unique individuals who have the same vision as we do! Pay is in stock and in book sale commission only at this time. This will change as the company grows.
We wish you the very best of luck in all of your endeavors!