The First Books Publishers Lowdown...

This week I've been happily perusing a formidable stack of emails from debut authors (still deciding on who to interview for First Books), and now it's time for my annual lowdown--my unscientific findings regarding which publishers are friendliest to new writers based on the 75-ish emails I received.

This year, the following publishers/imprints were sited by more than one debut author:

• Delacorte (consistently debut author friendly)
  
• Dial
• Feiwel & Friends
• Farrar, Straus & Giroux
• Greenwillow
• Henry Holt
• Houghton
  
• Hyperion
• Little Brown
• Putnam
• Razorbill
• Simon & Schuster
• Scholastic
• Viking
• Walker

And this year's Most-Friendly-to-New-Writers Crown goes to (for the second year in a row):

• HarperCollins (publishing five of the debut authors I heard from)

This year's batch of first-timers are overwhelmingly YA authors--just about half. The other half is rounded out by slightly more middle grade authors than picture book authors and illustrators.

And only a handful of the new writers who emailed me mentioned having agents. I did not ask, however--I am sure more than five of you have agents. Don't you like your agents, new writers? I kid--I know you do! If you didn't think to mention them to me, I'm sure you remembered them in your acknowledgments and you'll thank them when you win awards. (Please don't Chad Lowe your agent.)