What an AAcquiring Editor Is Actually Looking for Right Now (An Interview with Susan Marston of Albatros Books)

If you write for children, you've probably wondered what's really happening on the other side of the submission inbox. This week on Writers With Wrinkles, we got to ask an actual acquiring editor — and she didn't hold back.

Susan Marston spent 25 years as the editorial director of the Junior Library Guild, reading books from essentially every children's publisher in the country. Now she's the editorial director leading Albatros Books' expansion into the US market — Albatros being the largest publisher in the Czech Republic, which began its American push in 2021 and is now, as Susan put it, in the middle of "a big growth spurt."

Why Albatros is expanding to the US

Czechia's market, while healthy, is small. The US represents both a huge audience and a chance to strengthen foreign sales elsewhere — books that succeed here often travel better internationally too. Albatros's specialty is fun nonfiction, and the company has signed four picture books from North American authors so far, alongside sticker books, board books, licensed titles, and books acquired in translation. Susan described the team as unusually open to trying new formats — which, after 25 years of reading nearly everything published, is clearly part of what drew her to the role.

What she's actively trying to acquire

Susan was refreshingly specific about the gaps she's trying to fill:

• Friendship stories with more than two characters. As she put it, "Frog and Toad was about two friends" — she wants ensemble casts.
• Mysteries that go past the Sherlock-and-sidekick formula. Pulse-pounding, page-turning early and younger middle grade.
• Horror-lite for kids who want to be scared without anything grotesque, plus real suspense.
• Memoir, if it's something a kid would genuinely want to read.
• Magical realism and sci-fi, which she feels are both underrepresented in kids' books right now.
• Humor. This came up more than anything else. "There are not enough funny books in the world," she said — the kind kids elbow a friend over and say, "You have to read this."
• Chapter books that break the mold. After years of seeing publisher after publisher put out similar titles, she's specifically hunting for chapter book concepts that don't look like everything else on the shelf.

On word count

Susan doesn't think trend-chasing is the right way to evaluate a manuscript — but she does have a strong, consistent opinion on length: books have gotten longer across the board, and she misses when a tight 200-page book was a normal, celebrated thing. With kids competing against phones and video games for attention, she argued that a shorter, faster-paced book can be a bigger win than another epic. Her personal reading limit right now: nothing over 350 pages.

On trends (and why she mostly ignores them)

Rather than chasing what's hot, Susan leans on decades of reading kids' books as a parent, teacher, and editor to know what actually works. One trend she does champion: the continued rise of graphic novels, which she's watched grow from a gap in the market into a genuinely strong format — especially for nonfiction. She's also watching a slow shift away from middle grade's old default of "a boy and a girl who are best friends," while cautioning the industry not to swing so far that boy readers and boy characters get forgotten in the process.

How to submit

Albatros Books is actively acquiring picture books and chapter books from North American authors. Submission guidelines live on their website, and manuscripts can be sent to submissions@albatrossbooks.com.

Listen to the full conversation for more — including Susan's favorite magical realism picture books, her go-to funny middle grade recommendation, and why a swimming pool once made her forget it wasn't actually Christmas.