Children's Books

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When you get the writer's guidelines for many publishers, they aren't interested in seeing children's books.  At Criticol we like novels and other books with lots of words, so we don't really do Children's books.  Here's an answer I wrote when someone asked me for advice on behalf of her husband who'd written a children's book and got it printed himself and sold 200 books:

Me:  Cool.  As he probably has discovered, it is very difficult for an author to get attention from a publisher without an agent and it's worse trying to get attention from an agent unless you've published a number of popular and profitable works.  Probably one of worst segments for a writer to try to get published is children's books.  Part of that is because of the format, they're written in a way that anyone who doesn't know better thinks they can do.  It's like modern art, everyone thinks they can splash some paint and be famous.  The problem is, it takes real talent.  So, lots of people without talent write in small sentences with small words and call it a children's book.  Then they mail it to a publisher.  So, publishers in self defense say, "we are not accepting children's books" (actually, for all the same reasons many publishers aren't accepting anything anymore, but are publishing the same popular authors over and over.  Who can blame them?)

Selling 200 independently seems like he is either talented or persevering, or both.  If he hasn't, he should send it to publishers who do kids books (find out which by going to a book store and looking at kids books).  I say send a manuscript with the art, but not the book you paid to print (save that for paying customers).  Even if they say on their website that they aren't accepting, they look at everything, they can't help themselves.  They just won't write back unless they're in love.

We aren't going to do kid's books because we don't know enough about it, so we can't really help.  Tell him (and all your friends) that if they have a novel, 100 pages of short stories, or they want to contribute art for books we're making, please let us know.

If publishers don't get back to him, tell him to keep on writing and making and selling books.  Someone will notice that.  By the time they do, he might not care, because he's already got a good children's book publisher.  Him.

Suggestions for writer's block

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I have an 11 year old daughter who is working on her first novel (she's on page 6).  I gave her an old laptop of mine that she can use to write whenever the mood strikes her.  She said to me the other day that she had writer's block.  I asked her, "Is it just that you don't feel like writing, or you don't know what to write?  If it's the first one, do something else.  If it's the second one, just keep writing.  What is your character doing?  They can't be doing 'nothing' when they wait for you to keep writing, so write about what they do while they wait for you.  Write about them walking around in a circle or something."  Did my advice work?  I don't know; but she went away so I could work on my novel.

Random Paragraph - feel free to post yours :-)

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Josh came out of the room holding a pair of his underwear. His intention was to suggest to Adams that they must belong to the burglars, since they were teal. He was going to insist to Adams that they be bagged as evidence. Instead he was standing in the dining room holding a pair of midway briefs (teal) in the air by stretching the waistband between his thumbs, while trying to take in the fact that there were nearly a dozen men in the room, in body armor, pointing semi-automatic weapons at him. One of them yelled at him to get down. As he started to get down on his knees, with his hands up, he said, “Hey Steve, the police are here.”