EK BooksBooks with heart on issues that matter
Held 11 August 2026 · Recording available now
The Publisher's Town Hall
Our first Town Hall has been and gone — and it was a good one. We ran the full forty-five minutes, the questions were excellent, and EK Books is still acquiring. The recording is yours, free.
Watch the recording — free, instant access
45 minutes · The talk, then the live Q&A in full
The talk, in full
The Top 5 Mistakes Aspiring Children's Authors Make
— That May Be Holding You Back
Couldn't make it live? You've missed nothing. Everything is in the recording.
Watch the recording
Pop your name and email below and we'll send you the full 45 minutes straight away.
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You'll also be first to know when the next quarterly Town Hall is on — and you can come to that one live.
What's in it
Forty-five minutes with your publisher
It was a town hall, not a lecture — a short, honest talk, and then the floor went to the writers in the room. Both halves are in the recording.
The first 30 minutes
The talk
Nathan walked through what EK Books is publishing right now, what we're actively looking for next, and the five mistakes we see most often in the submissions we receive.
- A tour of the list, cover by cover — and what those books have in common
- What we're actively acquiring: neurodiversity, mental health, belonging
- Why a story has to travel — our books are sold into 24 languages
- The five mistakes — and how to fix each one
Every one of the five is fixable.
The last 15 minutes
The live Q&A
Then we opened the floor, and the questions kept coming until the clock ran out — on craft, on the submission process, and on building a career as a children's author.
- Answered live, unscripted, by the publisher
- The part everyone told us afterwards they liked best
Worth knowing: our submissions window reopens on 1 October. If you're planning to send us something, this is the 45 minutes to watch first.
Your host
Nathan Thomas
Nathan is managing editor at Exisle Publishing, the parent imprint of EK Books. He reads hundreds of children's manuscripts a year, has a big say in what EK Books takes on, and represents the list at book fairs like Frankfurt and Bologna.
Coming up
The next Town Hall
We're doing this every quarter. Same shape — a short talk, then the floor is yours — with a new topic each time, and the hour rotated so it isn't always the same hemisphere getting up early.
Register above for the recording and you'll get the date for the next one before we announce it anywhere else.
Who you'll be talking to
A little about EK Books
Since 2013 we've published children's books on the themes other publishers tend to avoid. Our motto is 'Books with Heart on Issues that Matter' — and we really do mean it.
We've been nominated three times for Publisher of the Year at the Bologna Children's Book Fair, and our titles have twice won the SCBWI Crystal Kite Award for Book of the Year in Australia and New Zealand. You'll find our books across the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and in translation throughout Europe and Asia.
Held 11 August 2026
Watch it now
Most writers never get the chance to sit down with a publisher and simply ask. This is forty-five minutes of exactly that — and it's yours for an email address.
Send Me The Recording →Free · Instant access · Plus first word on the next quarterly Town Hall
Got a question before then? Email [email protected] — we always write back.