Reminder to writers! ALWAYS consider the publication terms carefully, even if the mission statement speaks to you. Just read some really sketchy guidelines for a publisher whose focus is diverse kids books and hooboy the fine print in those guidelines was very exploitative!

It's always a huge red flag if any publisher states in their guidelines that you are giving up any rights by submitting. At time of submission the ONLY thing you should be committing to is very simple factual statements, like a statement that this story is your original work.

And exploitative terms are only made worse when you actively solicit submissions FROM CHILDREN. I know this is shocking, but children are typically not contract-savvy and you try to steal their work because they don't know better, that is shit behavior.

"all work submitted to <publisher> becomes the property of <publisher>". NOPE, just get off that site, and never come back. Even if a publisher publishes your work, it should still not be their PROPERTY, they should only have limited rights.

Like "first English publication rights" or "nonexclusive English digital publication rights". There is no circumstance under which they should need to own the story itself or copyright.

I see it sometimes where publisher guidelines look good except they say "copyright returns to author at publication" and I cringe. Never sure if those ones are malicious or just ignorant. They should never need copyright, and they should KNOW that.

And if they're well-meaning and ignorant... it would still make me pretty darned nervous submitting to a publisher who doesn't understand the basics of copyright, yeah? This is THE BASICS, you don't have to be a copyright lawyer to get this.