In the Zoom app

1) select the Contacts icon,

2) select + and Invite a Zoom Contact 

3) enter info@cyaconference.com and 

4) select invite.

Mark it as such in the front of the document, and have your story follow from there. 

e.g.:

Your header is here 

Then on your page -  

Pitch: Snakes on a plane. 

Manuscript: It was a dark and stormy night...

Also, look in the Competition word sample file we have shown you in there. 

Pitch (also called a logline)  = One Sentence

Your one sentence pitch is an extremely condensed but concise description of your story, specifically the plot of your story.

This is used by many agents and editor on submission, but also when someone asks, “What’s your book about?”

Examples:

• Fiction: Extraction Film - An Australian black ops mercenary whose mission to save an Indian crime lord's kidnapped son in Dhaka, Bangladesh goes awry when he is double-crossed.

• Fiction: Hunger Games - Katniss Everdeen voluntarily takes her younger sister's place in the Hunger Games: a televised competition in which two teenagers from each of the twelve Districts of Panem are chosen at random to fight to the death.

• Memoir: It’s the story of how I dedicated my life to building a foundation to protect children, after my son was kidnapped.

• Picture Book: The Silly Seabed Song - by Aura Parker – “The Rock Oysters sing the Silly Seabed Song to help send the sea creatures to sleep, but the crazy words are too much fun and it just makes them all laugh instead!”

• Picture Books: Ten little fingers and ten little toes – Board Book – Mem Fox and Helen Oxenbury – "As everyone knows, nothing is sweeter than tiny baby fingers and chubby baby toes . . ."

A useful resource to help you with this important part of your writing journey is https://nathanbransford.com/blog/2010/05/how-to-write-one-sentence-pitch

No, the 600 word count is the maximum number of words you can submit. It can be shorter.

• If you’re entering words you qualify as aspiring.

• If you’re entering for the illustrations you’ll qualify as published.

• If your submission contains words and illustrations you’ll need to enter it into the published category.

Yes

Yes - this is one of the generally accepted formats for Picture Book submissions. Your illustration notes DO NOT form part of your word count.

Yes

We do not take anything from you — you retain your copyright, it is still your intellectual property.

Yes, in the unpublished section — as long as you only have one book published in the sections genres. If you have 2 or more — you can enter the PUBLISHED section.

Your entry story needs to be unpublished in anyform.

The Publishing house you want to send your completed manuscript to, e.g. Lothian, Random House, UQP, Walker, Scholastic, Macmillan Education, HarperCollins, etc. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT - it holds marks in the judging — research your publisher you want to submit your book to.

Note: CYA Competition is set up to mirror the submission process to a publishing company. CYA designed this competition to help people be the best writers and illustrators they can be. Send in the neatest, clearest manuscript or illustrations and, of course, target the correct publisher. This means that we expect the entrants to have started looking around at what the publishers' houses are putting out onto the shelves, both in their new and backlog books.

For example, there is no use wasting your time by submitting a manuscript or illustrations to Mills and Boon if it's a picture book. M&B only publish ROMANCE NOVELS for the adult and YA market. And then there is also no use sending a chapter book about dead people coming to life and haunting a town to a publisher who specialised in inspirations style books either.

Learning where your book needs to be targeted and to whom. Knowing your target publisher means knowing your market. This is a very important step in the publishing industry — and is often overlooked by all of us enthusiastic authors & illustrators.

We are aware that many people entering are not quite at the stage of thinking about sending their work to publishers just yet. Still, it's a good thing to get a grip on early in your writing career.

Don't worry that they are not accepting unsolicited at time of entry, still put them down as your target publisher, you will not lose any points because they are closed at present. Publishers doors open and close all the time, and we take that into consideration as judges.

It is open to everyone worldwide. (We have had entries from France, India, PNG, Singapore, South Africa, UK and the USA in the past.)

Sample files can be downloaded from the link below:

• Competition Word sample file

No. That was a collection of stories; it was not your own book.

If the book has your name alone on the front, you are considered published in book format. A few articles in a magazine, paid columns etc. are not book format.

This was removed from the rules in 2012 - but our thoughts on competition placings, and reentering into another competition are below… 

IF you have reworked the story since the win, like it was a 500 words story that won and is now a 20,000-word length novel, it is no longer the same piece and can enter. 

If you have done very little to it, and want to submit it basically identical to the last achievement, then you can enter, but we do encourage you to write something new as well and enter that. After all, the winning story has already had its competition glory; you know its good. If the entry has previously WON a CYA Competition, we ask that you not enter it again.

That is it. By sending in the entry form, you agree to the terms and state the work is yours and unpublished. Once you submit the entry form, you agree to the terms and say the work is yours, and you are unpublished in book format. (Or 2 books or more if you are published.) However, if you receive a contract, it is general etiquette to let us know so we can pull your entry out of the competition.

Excluding illustration notes, we only want to see your first 500 words of your story. If it fits into the 500 - then we get the whole thing, if not — then we only see a 500-word sample. (If there is a serious twist at the end then put a little NOTE at the bottom, so we know where you have taken your storyline.) 

A useful thing to do is to draw a line AFTER THE 500 limit, and give us the rest. Some judges will read the rest - some won’t. We do accept this into the competition. 

Remember the 500 words is to keep it simple and efficient for our judges and IS NOT A PICTURE BOOK RULE!!!

All writing entries are destroyed after the competition is over. All electronic writing files are deleted from the CYA and judges computers. All electronic illustrations are deleted off the judges' computers but are used by the CYA computers for display on the CYA Conference websites. (Gaining exposure for the illustrators.)

Yes, that’s what this competition is all about. Getting your work off that huge slush pile and under an editors eyes. However, if you receive a contract, it is general etiquette to let us know so we can pull your entry out of the competition.

Yes

An alternative if you are having consistent problems is to email info@cyaconference.com.

If you still have problems call Tina on 0408 751 208 (AEST office hours only please.)

We can also send you a dropbox link for uploading to make file transfer easier if your files are larger than 10MB

If ALL your books have been out of print for the last five years, and you have not been contracted during that time, you are not considered published anymore for this competition only, and may elect to enter in the PUBLISHED or UNPUBLISHED section.

For CYA Conference Judging Purposes only: 

These are approximate ages because no one can say that every child is the same in their reading level - ever. No one had come up with an exact science here, so these are just the estimates that we use when judging in age groups rather than upper and lower, and these are not general rules, remember there are always exceptions. 

• Pre-school - 0 - 4 (Picture books without school themes.) 

• Primary School - 5 - 7 (Picture Books with school themes, advanced language and themes) 

• Younger Primary Children - 5 - 8 

• Older Primary Children - 9 -12 (Middle Grade) 

• YA - anything from 12 - 25 (BUT it can be broken down further...) 

• YA - 12 - 14 (Younger) 

• YA - 15 - 19 (Used to be 15 - 21 but then New Adult came in.) 

• YA - 19 - 25 (Also called New Adult since +-2009)

To see more on the JUDGING PROCESS enter here

In August 2013, CYA did a survey because we had conflicting words from judges on Illustration notes. The general consensus amongst publishers asked was that these come down to the personal choice and preference of the editors. However, every publishing house we asked gave a different answer.

These were a few of the responses, and they gave us more to think about than to take action on. As an organisation that help people on their publication path, CYA Conference will continue to read illustration notes as part of the Picture Book categories, as it does help some of our volunteer judges understand what is being conveyed.

We have deliberately removed the publisher and their publishing house from these quotes.

My question to the publishers: If submitting a picture book - is it okay to submit with illustration notes, or do you need the text to stand on its own without the notes?

5 Publisher responses:

“Notes are fine and usually give the publisher a good idea of how the author ‘sees’ the book. But I tend to strip them out when I send the manuscript to an illustrator as they can often be very distracting to an illustrator who needs to interpret the manuscript in their own way.”

* * *

“It’s absolutely fine to submit with illustrator notes. We will still consider the text alone on its own merits, but often illustrator notes help clarify a subtle text, particularly if the words are intended to say something totally different to the illustrations. It doesn’t detract from the text at all.”

* * *

“I think it is a personal thing. Every publisher likes it done a different way.”

* * *

“I think this really depends on the publisher, so there’s no easy answer. Some of the most amazing picture books are the ones where the illustrator has come up with a concept that completely flips the story on its head – for instance, in Sounds Spooky the story was originally about kids being scared exploring a haunted house, but illustrator Sarah Davis flipped it so that the story was about the ghost girl saying ‘I’m not scared’ as she hears the sounds of the kids exploring. So giving illustration notes might stifle an illustrator’s creativity. On the other hand, it’s good to know that an author has thought about illustrations since a common mistake first-time picture book writers make is to describe things that will be seen in the illustrations – how a character looks, what they’re wearing, their expressions, etc. Perhaps the only illustration notes that would be necessary are those where the writer anticipates that a crucial part of the story (e.g. a twist in the plot) will be told through the illustrations, so the story wouldn’t make sense without explaining that.”

* * *

“Some texts need illustration notes to explain what is going on in fact, because the text is so spare, so I am happy to receive them, but I won’t always pass them on to the illustrator (depending on the illustrator and how vital or not the notes are to the understanding of the text). However, a separate rationale from the author could serve the same purpose and lose the risk of overprescribing to the illustrator, so it is probably preferable to provide that with bare text. A rationale is an explanation of the author’s intentions/reasons for writing the book, rather than a synopsis. They are often included in the advance information for preselling nowadays.”

* * *

So there you have it. One thing this did clear up – your story MUST stand up on its own without those illustration notes and make sense if they are stripped away. (Unless the pictures directly show an important flip in the story or something).