Once upon a time there was a talented youngster who wrote a rollicking story for the 9-13 years age group. His mother, wanting him to focus on creating more stories, researched the best local literary agent, followed the submission guidelines, and sent in a query. But those guidelines didn’t cover everything and very big, very amateur mistakes were made. One glance would have been all it took, and that carefully prepared submission was returned to sender. Publishing is an unforgiving business, and you don’t get the chance to ‘do-over’ or resubmit a query to the same agency unless you have the patience to wait many years.
There is so much assumed knowledge in publishing, it takes ages – even with the help of Mr Google and Mr Kindle – to learn all those things that set professional writers and illustrators apart from amateur ones. There is just as much to learn when it comes to self-publishing.
This e-book is the result of 15 months of continuous study into Children’s Book publishing and into what it takes for a writer or illustrator to be able to give up their day job and pursue a creative career full time (and still pay the bills). As actual questions cropped up on our journey to publication, and in the development of the careers of local writers and illustrators, the answers we found were collected. Those answers in time became this e-book.
Some of the chapters are about:
Book trailers
Website tips
Crowdfunding
Writing Press Releases
Using Social Media
Pricing
Illustration portfolios
Editing
Self-publishing options
Picture Books
How wonderful it would be if reading this book, and following the links to the recommended online content, helped you – or your loved one – avoid the majority of amateur mistakes.
Targeted Age Group:: Adult
What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
Panic.
Yes, that was the initial motivation.
That’s what you do when you discover that your child has creative talents, because it is very hard to make a good living from creative talent. You can put three hours into painting an image, another hour into scanning and reformatting it into a greeting card, add to it time for paperwork, and you would be fortunate to make a profit of a few dollars over a six month period in sales. Compare that with what a teenager earns in five hours at McDonalds, However there are some creative people who do achieve commercial success, eg Shaun Tan, Roald Dahl.
To reduce the panic the next step is learning as much as possible about these foreign countries called fine art, illustration, middle grade fiction, traditional publishing, and querying.
In the process you discover that a key ingredient to success is getting to know other children’s book writers and illustrators. Then you set out to find them locally.
Having set up a Yahoo group for communication with these local creatives, the need presents itself for something to kick start discussion. Thus begins the weekly round up of career developing material from online searches.
Some time later new members join up. They really need access to all the previous months of research.
But have you ever tried going backwards through over 50 Yahoo posts or blog-posts to find an answer you knew was in there somewhere? It isn’t easy at all. The majority of people just don’t have that level of patience.
Hence the need to take all that research and make it easily searchable under chapter headings with an index.
Once that was done, only editing,polishing and reformatting was required to present that information in e-book format in the hope that it might assist others on the journey to a creative career in children’s books.
Links to Purchase eBooks – Click links for book samples and reviews
Is this book in Kindle Unlimited? Yes
Buy Children’s Books: Getting to the next level as writers and illustrators On Amazon
Read more about the author here.
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