Children’s Literature

How To Get Published

Posted by on Mar 14, 2024 in Children's Literature, Editing, Writing Tips | 0 comments

Everyone Has a Story printed on a sheet of paper on a vintage typewriter. journalist, writer

A friend of a friend asked for some publishing advice recently, and I put together a little something that I thought might help others as well. Here you go:

Most of the big publishers require an agent, so if you have a finished manuscript or a solid proposal for a longer work (usually that means a few sample chapters and a well-developed outline), you can start there. Editor Brooke Vitale has an excellent list of agents who take children’s and YA literature.

Smaller and local presses don’t always require an agent, so you can also can start there if you like. In Maine, Islandport and Downeast Books do books with Maine/New England themes.

When it comes to looking for editors, assistant editors and associate editors can be the best targets. They are still building a list of writers and illustrators. Full editors and senior editors often have well-established relationships with creative types and not as much room on their lists for new people.

One thing that can help is to go to bookstores and libraries and look for books that you like or that seem similar to what you’ve written and see who the publisher is. Do check pub dates, too, because it’s not that helpful to see what a publisher was putting out a decade ago….you want current stuff.

Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance and the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators both have classes and workshops that can be helpful. And it can just be encouraging to get together with other people who are starting out and gather tips that way.

It’s a long slow process to get published! While you have one book out there looking for a home, continue working on new ideas and developing more manuscripts. It’s good for your mental health and for your career to have more than one (or two, or three) projects to show.

A friend of mine says, “It is the ground state of a manuscript to be rejected.” Most manuscripts are rejected most of the time. Prepare yourself, allow yourself to be sad for a few days when you get your first (second, third, seventeenth…) rejection, and keep going. Chocolate helps.


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Why We Do School Visits

Posted by on Jan 11, 2024 in Children's Literature, Educators & Librarians | 0 comments

And this, my friends, is why you want to invite an author to your kid’s school.

In case you have any difficulty with the handwriting, it reads:

“Dear Ms. Sarah, Thank you for showing us poetry. Sometimes I practice at home. Now I’m in love with poetry. Thank you for everything.”

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Audiobooks and Spotify

Posted by on Dec 14, 2023 in Children's Literature | 0 comments

photo by justin evans

Well this is…horrifying? I think this is horrifying.

Spotify is going to offer audiobooks? This is nice.

Spotify is only going to pay authors the full royalty if someone listens to the entire book? This is…alarming.

Royalties are small enough already. Not everyone knows that an author typically gets 10% of the price of a hardcover book and 6% of a paperback. (If we’re talking about a picture book, those royalties are split between author and illustrator.) But at least you get that entire amount even if somebody only reads a chapter or two.

Maybe this will be a delightful way to open up a huge new market and get lots and lots of new listeners…but I don’t feel I can be blamed for being skittish. It just seems like a way to whittle down the already small share of profit that goes to people who build up the creative work that allows platforms like Spotify to profit. (Except apparently they’ve yet to turn a profit? This also alarms me.)

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Happy Pub Day, Save the…Rhinos!

Posted by on Sep 7, 2023 in Animals, Children's Literature, Nonfiction, SERIES: Save the... | 0 comments

Delighted to announce that Save the…Rhinos! is now available. Each of the books in these nonfiction series has an intro by Chelsea Clinton and is full of fabulous animal facts and true stories of conservation success.

The best rhino fact–a contented rhino (lots of grass, plenty of warm sun, no other bothersome rhinos around) makes a noise like this: mmmmmwonk.

May your day be full of mmmmmmwonk!

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