We hope you had a great Thanksgiving! And if you grabbed a book to read to a child, we’re sure you had no trouble finding a Thanksgiving-themed story. Although there are lots of stories about Thanksgiving and Christmas, that’s not true about all yearly celebrations. Editors...
From our files we found these tidbits of wisdom for beginning editors, but the thoughts are helpful for writers also. Barbara Marcus, Random House, said to read as many books as you can so you have a broader knowledge of the industry…hang out in bookstores…and...
Want to write fast and get your idea for a children’s book on paper at last? Many writers set a quota of words per day. Here are our top 8 tips for writing fast and writing effectively. LEARN HOW TO WRITE FAST RIGHT 1. Start with a...
Do you know who is the popular children’s book writer who never once received a rejection slip? Here are three clues: She became an American citizen in 1865. She loved dollhouses and wrote a short story, “Racketty Packetty House” about the lively antics of a dollhouse family. She wrote...
Writers know the benefits of signing up for meetings with editors and agents at conferences, and the wise prepare themselves to make the best use of such encounters. The blurb sheet contains teasers about your manuscripts and shows word counts and categories, as well as...
In our workbook, Write a Marketable Children’s Book, we mention the importance of checking your manuscript for spelling and grammar errors. As competitive as the writing world is, we cannot afford to be careless with our writing. Shirley Raye has heard editors say that if they...
"Marley was dead, to begin with." This short, punchy line opens Charles Dickens’s A CHRISTMAS CAROL. But Lewis Carroll took his time with the beginning of ALICE IN WONDERLAND. "Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having...
Do you like to research? Some writers love research and do too much of it. Others hate it and do too little. We’ll post tips over the next four Fridays to help writers of nonfiction, who must research, and writers of fiction, who should research...
You’ve heard the saying about success, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” To succeed in selling what you write, “It’s what you know and who you know.” I’ll start with “what you know.” You may have an idea that would make a great...
Lists of best-selling children’s books are great tools for writers. They show us what publishers and consumers are buying, and we learn about our craft from reading other authors. In this post, we reveal the 30 best-selling picture books in the US. The list is...