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Update from ALA Midwinter 2011

January 10, 2011 in Events, Publishing | 12 comments

For those of you who don’t know, the ALA (American Library Association) hosts two big nationwide conferences each year, the Midwinter in January or February and the Annual in June (this year’s Annual is in New Orleans, so you better bet your bottom dollar that I’ll be there!). Just like BEA (May) is mostly an expo for booksellers to come and interact with publishers, marketers, and book-related service providers — and get geeky about big name authors who come to sign stuff — the ALA conferences cater to librarians. The Midwinter is also the conference where they announce award winners like the Morris, the Printz, the Newbery, and the Caldecott. (Which they’re doing in, like, an hour and a half!)

Aspiring writers don’t need to go to these conferences, but agents and rights people often show up to support their authors who may be making appearances, to take meetings with editors who are working the booths, and to troll the various publisher’s stations to see what’ll be new and upcoming on the shelves.

This weekend started with the rather hilarious JetBlue flight from JFK. It was one of the only direct flights to get to California at a reasonably early hour, so everyone in publishing had the same idea. There were at least 25 other industry people on the plane. I sat next to a wonderful editor, with another behind me, and an agent across the aisle, and that was just row 9! We got to San Diego for the floor opening, walked around, went to a Holiday House party, and then launched into meetings in earnest. I’d say my colleagues Jen Rofe, Kelly Sonnack, Jamie Weiss Chilton and I met with about 20 editors officially, but ran into tons more at the convention center.

The best part, though, and this I’ll freely admit, was the ARC fever. Not only did the librarians have it, but I came down with a case myself. The hottest ARC on the floor, in my opinion? The upcoming dystopian YA novel DIVERGENT by Veronica Roth. I’d already read it but snagged a copy to send to a client.

Overall, I got maybe six tote bags full of ARCs and F&Gs (“folded and gathered,” a preview format for picture books). I also got a great haul of finished picture books from our Little, Brown breakfast, including some favorites that I’d never actually had in my library, like CHILDREN MAKE TERRIBLE PETS by Peter Brown and SHARK VS. TRAIN by Chris Barton and Tom Lichtenheld.

I also saw a picture book that I’d somehow missed in 2010 and it is, no joke, my favorite picture book EVER. (I know I have a new “favorite picture book EVER” every few months or so, and it doesn’t include any picture books by my clients, because those are my favorite picture books EVER EVER, but this is still a wonderful designation that I save for only my rare beloveds.)

It’s called I’M THE BEST and it’s by author/illustrator (and Maisy creator) Lucy Cousins. I gravitated to it right away because its adorable cover and deceptively simple art called right out to me from the Candlewick booth. (Seriously, an untrained eye can look at this art and say, “I can do that with my eyes closed,” but it is so much more sophisticated than that.) Once I opened it up, I discovered a pitch-perfect, absolutely true-ringing kid voice in the character of Dog, who loudly proclaims he’s the best at everything…except maybe being a humble and generous friend. It’s amazing. Buy it right this second.

Finally, my colleagues and I walked around snapping pictures of ourselves with books by our clients. Here you’ll find Jamie with ORCHARDS by Holly Thompson, out from Delacorte/Random House on February 22nd. It’s a brilliant YA novel in verse about one girl’s experience with a classmate’s suicide and her own mixed Japanese-Jewish-American heritage.

Next is Kelly, who we snapped with two books on the Candlewick shelves. I haven’t read either, but they’re last year’s TAKE ME WITH YOU by Carolyn Marsden (right) and the upcoming WHAT COMES AFTER by Steve Watkins, which hits stores in April (left).

Here’s Jen Rofe with her very, very exciting book from Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins, called HOW LAMAR’S BAD PRANK WON A BUBBA-SIZED TROPHY by Crystal Allen. It’s a hilarious middle-grade story about an African-American kid, and superstar bowler, who just wants the same recognition as his all-star athlete older brother. Harper had a HUGE pile of ARCs out (which I, of course, called LamARCs…) and they were all snapped up within the first fifteen minutes of the expo. It’s out February 22nd as well, so you can snap up a copy for yourself.

Since this is my blog, you’ll have to look at my mug TWICE. First, I stopped to take a peek at a client’s book from Tricycle Press that he actually sold before we started working together. It’s the wonderful WHY DO I HAVE TO MAKE MY BED? by Wade Bradford (illustrated by Johnanna van der Sterre), out on the very popular day of February 22nd. It recently got a very nice starred review in Publisher’s Weekly, and I hope to report many sales for Wade in the future.

Finally, it was so cool and gratifying to see my very first book out on the display table! The book is PELLY AND MR. HARRISON VISIT THE MOON, an author/illustrator project from Lindsay Ward, out in March from Kane/Miller. This is a charming story of a girl and her dog who visit the moon in a rocket bathtub, and it’s the first contract I ever did. Lindsay and I have since sold one other project, to Dutton/Penguin, and her editor and I had a fantastic lunch on Saturday. I’m so excited for PELLY, Lindsay, and, truth be told, myself, as you can see! (I even inadvertently wore a matching purple sweater!)

I’m, unfortunately, still on east coast time, so I’m sitting in my colleague’s bathroom right now, blogging (maybe TMI, but doesn’t anyone else go turn the lights on in the bathroom and do stuff when it’s too early and they don’t want to bug other people?). I’m horrible at going back to sleep and it’s 6 a.m. in California, so I guess I’m just going to hang out and wait for ALA award news to start coming down the wire at 7:30. Overall, though, I had a tremendously fun weekend with colleagues and friends in San Diego, and can’t wait to relax at home in San Francisco later this afternoon. Hope you all had a great weekend!

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Simple Advice, Hard to Follow

January 3, 2011 in Advice, Publishing, Writing | 34 comments

A few weeks ago, I got an email from Joni, an email like the kind I’ve gotten from many writers before her. It dealt with frustration and impatience. The “all dressed up with nowhere to go” pain of just wanting to have a book out. This past weekend, while I was supposed to be away from the computer and having a life (ha!), I got a similar email from a client. Sorry, dear, but I’m going to quote it:

Okay, so I am working on my book, and I keep getting so worried that I’ve got SO FAR to go that I just close the document. I’m worried that after this round, it still has readers to go, and then another round of other readers and then I am so slow with revisions that it will be 2013 before it will be done.

My advice for Joni and for my client is: dig in, get your eyes off the calendar, and do your work. Getting published isn’t a matter of course. And it’s certainly not a matter of speed. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that publishing is slow in most cases. Slow. Sloooooooooow. Slow as molasses. Slow as frozen molasses. Slow as a cube of frozen molasses frozen inside a bigger cube of even slower frozen molasses. You get my point, I think.

When publishing finally decides to move — or if it moves quickly — it’s out of a writer’s control. Which house will buy what, which editor will love what, how much they’ll invest in a project, how much marketing they’ll give it, what the sales will be like, which readers/librarians/booksellers will respond to what and how, what will win awards, what will take off up the bestseller charts and what will quietly blip off the radar screen, etc. etc. etc.

If you think you’re freaking out now about just getting your work published, imagine the full-scale neurotic meltdown that awaits you once you have royalty statements to read, bookstore events where you always feel like the nervous hostess, wondering if anyone will show up, Goodreads/blog reviews to stress over, school visits and public speaking engagements, 24/7 access to your Amazon ranking and, now, BookScan numbers for your sales, organized every which way!

Conversely, learning and practicing and revising are the only things you can do to take control of the process. If you’re just honing your writing, it’s probably a good thing that you’re not out there as a full-fledged author yet. Think about not just the shiny publishing contract and the spike in Twitter followers and the glory of realizing your dream. There’s a whole career and business element, too, most of it amazing, some of it challenging and anxiety-making. It’s okay that you haven’t gotten there yet. You have to really be ready for this sort of thing, and thinking you’re reading and actually being ready are two different things.

This is as much of a pep talk for me as it is for Joni and for my client and for countless other writers out there who are feeling similar frustrations. Do you think I sit around saying, “Well, I think I’ve sold enough books. Time to pack it in and rest on my laurels.” Absolutely not. I am the most impatient person I think I’ve ever met (my mother would definitely agree with me here).

Once I get an offer, I immediately want another one. If I sign an incredible client, I go back to my slush pile the very next day and keep an eye out, because the submissions don’t stop coming. If I close an auction, well, I have a nice stiff drink first, of course, but then I want to jump in to the stress and exhilaration all over again a few minutes later. If an hour passes without an email from an editor, I start to wonder if there’s something wrong with my email client and then bang on my laptop to make sure it’s working properly.

I know it was just January 1st and that we have a bright and shiny year ahead of us. Our resolution lists are long and our resolve is screwed to its sticking place. But I think that’s also setting some writers up for a case of the crazies: “2010 didn’t do it for me, so if I don’t FINALLY achieve my goals in 2011, I am going to freak out!!!!!!”

Well, here is the number one piece of advice I can give: be patient. It goes hand in hand with the idea of resilience and not giving up and constantly generating new ideas (all discussed in my “Dealing With Rejection” post). And as much as I talk about the publishing business/agents/queries/submissions on the blog, here’s my other advice: it really is all about the book idea and the execution. In other words, the craft.

This year, I will doggedly pursue book deals for my clients, court new clients, and leverage my authors’ budding careers to get them more business. But, for my own sanity, I will also cultivate patience. 2011 is going to be a wonderful year. Keep reading, keep writing, don’t stop trying…but also spare yourself the paralyzing anxiety of the ticking clock.

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Dealing With Rejection

December 22, 2010 in Advice, Publishing, Writing | 53 comments

Here’s a universal question from longtime reader and friend of kidlit, Siski:

How do you recommend getting over rejection? When it feels like you’ve exhausted all avenues? I know you took time out of writing…does that help bring back your enthusiasm to start over?

This is a great question, especially as we prepare to greet a new year. Of course, I hope 2011 is full of success and acceptance and the fulfillment of publishing dreams, but I know there will also be some rejection. So as we prepare to leap back at it come January 1st, I wanted to share some thoughts on this dreaded topic.

I was at Big Sur a few weeks ago and speaking with a lovely agency client. We were talking about writing journeys and she mentioned the idea of mastery. See, there is a scale of mastery that goes from Unconscious Incompetence to Unconscious Competence. If you’re thinking, “Say what?” I’ll explain:

Unconscious Incompetence: In other words, “ignorance is bliss.” You’ve just started writing and, wow, you’re really good. All your friends and family love your stuff. In fact, you have the makings of a J.K. Rowling or Dan Brown plot on your hands and you couldn’t be happier. You rush off your first draft to the industry’s top agents before revision — hey, that’s what the editor is for, right? — and then…the real world intrudes and gives you a spanking. This is your first taste of rejection, and it strikes you like a bolt from the blue.

Conscious Incompetence: You take a step back. Wow. This writing stuff is actually pretty hard. It turns out you were doing okay but now you’ve started reading a whole lot more and you’re seeing what other writers are doing. You didn’t even know some of it was possible. This is when you realize that you have a lot to learn before you’re “ready for prime time.” Some writers hold off on submitting when they reach this point, as it’s more a time of contemplation and study.

Conscious Competence: You’ve thrown out your first book idea — or five — and now you really think you have The One: the project that will get published. It’s still a bit of a struggle to sit down and write, and sometimes it takes many revisions to really nail something, but your language is working, the writing is clean, and you’re developing your voice. Now you’re ready to start querying again, and you’re energized and feeling good.

Let’s pause for a minute. This is actually the stage where most writers get frustrated. They’ve gotten over their first, ignorant efforts, they’ve done a lot of work on themselves and on their writing, and they finally feel pretty masterful. However, the rejections keep coming. And some of them are vague: the voice isn’t doing it for me, I liked it but didn’t love it, it doesn’t have that je ne sais quoi factor, it’s not competitive in today’s tough market…etc.

Meanwhile, writers at this stage have been reading a lot, are usually following the industry, and they feel like they get it at long last. So why are they still getting rejected? Why isn’t publication, finally, their reward after years of hard work in the trenches?

Because most writers who are functioning at the level of Conscious Competence haven’t reached mastery yet. There’s one more step, and this is the hardest to achieve:

Unconscious Competence: This is when you’re not really thinking…you’re doing. You don’t sit there breaking your brain for ideas. Your characters aren’t flat. You’re not struggling with voice. You’re not staring at the screen and waiting for the perfect image or metaphor or plot point or dialogue or characterizing detail to come to you. You’re just writing. And you’re writing well. Your craft level is on par with already-published writing. Everything just clicks, and you finally have the tools to elevate your stories to the publishable level, with enough authority and sophistication that your manuscripts demand publication. That’s not to say that masters don’t have tough days, but at least they’ve reached their cruising altitude and they don’t mind any slight turbulence along the way.

When I speak to writers at conferences, I talk about authority. Authors tell stories with authority, in an authoritative way. And those are the people I want to work with. If you’re not there yet — and 99.9% of people who contact me aren’t — don’t feel bad about it. In his book OUTLIERS: THE STORY OF SUCCESS, Malcolm Gladwell postulates that it takes about 10,000 hours, or 10 years, to achieve mastery in your chosen field or craft. Other writers say it takes 1,000,000 bad words. Most of the published writers I know say it took them about a decade to get their first book deal.

With publishing in a tailspin and fewer books achieving commercial success, agents and editors are really focusing their efforts on masterful writers. In terms of your own development as a person, you should strive to be the best you can possibly be. So if you are getting rejected, don’t let it crush you. You’re just not there yet. And you shouldn’t expect to be. Just because some people get published their first time out (ahem, Stephenie Meyer), doesn’t mean that’s the way your story will go. Are you really justified in your angst? Can you say that you’ve put a decade of solid work into your craft?

The enlightening — and scary in a this-is-your-mission-should-you-choose-to-accept-it way — thing is: you can’t control the publishing industry or the “gatekeepers,” but you are in full control of your creative work. So instead of sitting there and griping about rejection, the only empowering, right, and inspiring thing for you to do is to open up your Word doc and start reading, writing, and revising. The power to write something incredible lies in your hands. And if all that reading, writing, and revising sounds like too much work? Perhaps the path of being a writer isn’t the right one for you.

Keep going. The responsibility lies on your shoulders. And don’t be afraid to put down your old project and start a new one. You can’t cling to one idea in this or any other business. If you dig your claws in to something that has been rejected everywhere, of course you’re going to be miserable. Not to mention that if you’re already running out of ideas — and you’re not even published yet — you’re in deep trouble. So cast off your unsuccessful projects and work on something else. Focus on your craft. Plod along toward mastery. I send rejections every single day of my life, but I don’t do it to wound or hurt or ruin. All I’m thinking as I press “Send” is, and I’m very serious here: “Not yet”or “Not yet, but soon.”

Receive a rejection, learn from it if it has anything valuable or constructive to teach you, and move on as you stick with your trajectory toward Unconscious Competence. You shouldn’t view it as a negative thing, and never a personal thing. You should view it as encouragement to keep going and keep growing.

To top off this post, Siski also wanted me to ask: How do you deal with rejection? Post your thoughts in the comments!

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Should I Post My Writing Online?

December 20, 2010 in Advice, Agent, Publishing | 21 comments

In the last week or so, a few people have emailed to ask me whether or not it’s okay to post samples of your work online (like a few pages or a few chapters) on your blog, in forums, or whatever. This can be tricky. In the Internet age, if you post something online on a blog, social networking site, online literary journal, or public forum, it is considered “published.”

Obviously, the length of the sample you post is important. Read on:

If you are posting an entire poem or short story online, and then you try to sell it to a literary magazine, for example, the fact that is has previously been “published” is not good, as the entire work has appeared elsewhere. The editor of that literary magazine wants new, never-before-seen content. This applies both to print and online venues, as there are a lot of respectable online journals and literary magazines.

If you are posting a short portion of a novel online, and then the novel gets interest from an agent or editor, I’d say you could be okay, since the sample is short. Even though most editors and agents don’t like to work with previously published material, whether posted online or self-published, a short sample on your blog may not be enough to put them off your project. (Careful, though, as individual policies here do vary greatly.)

So when you think about posting online, consider how much of your work you’ll be exposing. Are you posting all of it? That will count as “published” and that website will be your venue for the piece, so you better make your peace with it. A sample that’s less than 5% of the total work? You could post, if you really want to, but know that you may run into some obstacles down the road.

The one exception to the “published” rule is if you post your writing in a private forum, such as the Verla Kay Blueboards. One reason to do this is if you want to get critique of your work from other writers. What you post in a members-only area of the Internet isn’t available to the general public and is therefore not considered “published” once it goes up. If getting feedback is really the reason you want to post your writing online in the first place, I’d do it behind the closed doors of a private forum.

Now, I know there are people thinking: But what if I post something and then take it down? Ah, Grasshopper, the reason is simple: online content never dies. Search engines log all new web content as it is created. If you put something online, ever, even for a short while, it will stay in a search engine’s cache and will still appear in search results.

I’m probably not going to be popular for this opinion, but I don’t think you should post your writing online as a means of attracting editor or agent interest. While some agents and editors do troll blogs looking for talent, I get most of my clients from submissions and conferences. I’m not crazy about most unpublished writer blogs, as some of you know, so I don’t go prospecting there. Don’t even get me started on sites like Authonomy and InkPop.

Plus, your writing should change and grow as you keep at it. And first chapters are usually the most wildly revised in any book. I know a lot of writers who keep hammering at their oh-so-important openings, draft after draft. Your beginning might change, so do you really want an old draft online for all to see? Maybe that doesn’t matter to you, but it certainly bugs me. When I turned in my MFA thesis, I declined to make a copy available in the university library (what usually happens with thesis manuscripts). Why? After one revision, that manuscript becomes just another rough draft, and I don’t want a rough draft floating around. I don’t know about you, but I often look back at old writing and cringe. Unless you plan to keep updating your writing sample online, it will become stale work at some point.

If you do want to post something tantalizing about your book, post a query-like summary of the story and a tag line. That’s the same kind of advertising that a published book has: the back and flap copy that is meant to describe the story and entice the reader. Write some flap copy for your manuscript — this will be good practice to help you hone in on  your hook, too — and put it on your blog. Some writers make a short and cheap video trailer. Others pick a playlist or images that evoke their work. That should be enough marketing to get people excited.

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Is it MG or YA?

November 20, 2010 in Advice, Publishing, Writing | 43 comments

This is a question I get ALL THE TIME from writers. It is some variety of the following, which came from Jesse:

How would you classify a sci-fi adventure novel with 14 year old boy protagonist? Would that be upper MG? Lower YA? I’ve heard so many different opinions on the matter!

Ah, yes. The great “Is it MG or YA?” debate. It rages on in many writer’s minds, critique groups, query letters, and even submission rounds with editors. It seems like there are always books that ride the MG/YA line.

My advice? Get out of that gray area! If you read a lot of MG and YA books, you can easily isolate the difference. MG books are shorter than YA, deal with any “issues” or “content” (edgy stuff) but only secondhand (like the kid’s mom is an alcoholic, not the kid herself), have less darkness and often a sweeter ending than most books for older readers, are sophisticated but still accessible for reluctant readers, are more open to curriculum tie-ins and educational content, and are written to appeal to 10-12 year-old readers, at their heart.

YA books are longer, darker, edgier, less about education and more about a riveting story (though MG should have one, too, of course), and written to appeal to readers 14+.

There are, obviously, gray areas and gray-area readers, say, ten year-olds who are really advanced and sophisticated, and teen readers who are still reading MIX books (a really fun line of girl-centric MG from Simon & Schuster). Or teens who don’t want to read about edgy, risque content*. Sure. There are always exceptions.

But to give yourself the strongest chance at success (and publication), I’d urge you to follow the rules for the project you hope will be your debut, and decide whether you’re writing MG or YA*. Especially in this case.

When you’re just starting to write either MG or YA, you have to start out knowing which one you want to target. Middle school (where MG readers dwell) and high school (where YA readers live) are as different as night and day. Think about your daily cares and worries in middle school. Now think about high school. You were preoccupied with completely different things, and your world, your body, your psyche, your emotions, your relationships with friends, family, and romantic others…all of it was very different from one to the next.

In middle school, kids care mostly about friends and family. They feel the pull to stay and be a kid, and also the need to grow up. They want to fit in and be accepted, but they’re also forging their own identities. It’s a very turbulent time. Plus, they’re going through puberty, so hormones and enticing people of the opposite (or same) sex are just starting to cause major havoc. As for the future, most middle school kids just want to survive until high school.

In high school, kids are really individuating themselves. But now some* also drive, drink, have sex, bully on a really grand scale, and have to make decisions about college (and decide the rest of their lives, as they see it). They’re facing enormous pressures from the social world, their families, themselves. Almost all of their childhood selves are gone, and they’re trying on adulthood for size. That’s havoc in and of itself, but a very unique type.

These audiences are vastly different. Their worlds are different. Their mindsets, cares, hopes, and dreams shift perspectives when you cross from MG into YA. Sure, many things about the childhood/teen experience and many things about the human experience remain the same, but, in terms of relatability — which you really have to think about when writing for pre-teens, tweens, and teens — you are dealing with two different beasts.

In Jesse’s case, I gave the following advice:

I would make your protagonist either 13 and call it MG or 15 and call it YA. There are two shelves at the bookstore: MG and YA. You don’t see a shelf in the middle. Sure, there can be MG for slightly younger and slightly older readers (ditto YA), but you really do have to pick a side. Don’t just go by the age of the character, either (though I would avoid 14, since it’s such a cusp age between middle and high school). Go by level of sophistication, length of manuscript (MG is about 35k, YA more like 50k and up), and darkness (is there a lot of content, ie: sex, violence, etc., or a mature feel, ie: the last HARRY POTTER vs. the first one?). Use all those guidelines to help you pick one or the other.

And I stand by these words. Sure, you can say it’s “upper MG” or “lower YA” or even the (detestable) term “tween,” but the truth is, there are only two shelves at most bookstores: MG and YA. They’re not going to build a special shelf just for your upper-MG/tween/lower-YA opus.

There is a diversity of lengths and age levels and levels of sophistication on the MG and YA shelves, from really young MG to really old YA, but each of those books had to pick a side initially. You have to pick a side, too.

Only you can choose which audience your work is written for, but there is a fundamental difference between MG readers and YA readers, and that’s where your thinking needs to start. That’s the thought process I hope I’ve sparked with this post. Think of your ideal audience, then build a character and a story that they will relate to.

When I think of stories and of pitches, the ideal reader (and their ideal age group) are never far from my mind. And I do often try to tweak a character/manuscript to the right age when working with a writer. But it still needs to come to me knowing, at its heart, who it is written for…MG or YA.

* ETA: To over-clarify, I’m saying that you should give yourself a strong chance of success by deciding whether your book is MG or YA, and not hanging it in a gray area.

I’m not saying that you need to have edgy teen elements in your fiction. Even though I felt I was very clear, someone brought up an issue in the comments, and I want to address things like that, not just leave them dangling out there, unanswered. Just so we’re all on the same — ahem, bad publishing joke alert — page. :)

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Is Contemporary YA a Difficult Market?

November 8, 2010 in Agent, Publishing, Writing | 30 comments

Reader Rachel asked in the comments a few weeks ago:

In our writing group, we have been talking about whether or not it is harder to find an agent and/or sell our YA manuscripts if they are contemporary romance/realistic vs. paranormal or fantasy. What are your thoughts on this? If it is more difficult, is there anything that does happen to work particularly well or would make a manuscript more saleable within the contemporary genre?

I know that I got into YA and into reading and into writing and into agenting because of contemporary YA. I was always more of a Sara Zarr, John Green, Jenny Han, Laurie Halse Anderson reader than I was a fantasy or paranormal fan. And when I started looking at the market, there was a lot of contemporary realistic writing on shelves and doing well.

But today’s kidlit market, which got going in earnest over a decade ago with HARRY POTTER and has now been given another injection of money and attention by the TWILIGHT franchise, has always been anchored in fantasy and paranormal. And that’s where the trends — somewhat unfortunately for me and my contemporary/realistic tastes — all seem to be going. Even if there’s no outright fantasy, magic, or paranormal element, novels would rather be set in dystopian times than in the good old real world.

Not only do I know this from observation of bookstore shelves and publishers’ upcoming catalogues, but I’ve heard countless editors discussing how difficult it is to get a straight contemporary/realistic story through their acquisitions committees. Apparently, contemporary realism isn’t much of a sales hook these days, unless either the voice or the subject matter is simply irresistible. Some publishers are, obviously, more interested in this genre than others, but the going still seems to be much tougher now than it was a few years ago.

So what can writers of contemporary realism do in order to make their books more saleable? Well, romance is a huge hook. I think it’s the number one thing that girls (especially) and boys (in the John Green vein, not in the flowery sense) are interested in as teenagers. So every contemporary manuscript I look at should have, if not a flat-out romantic relationship, at least some romantic interest. The teenage years are a time when everything from friendships to family gets complicated, so you have to really play up on those themes and relationships.

And you do have to have a really strong hook. It’s not enough to just have a story of one girl’s senior year as she experiences different relationships and events at school. “Coming of age” is no longer a great sales hook, because every book for the kidlit market is, in one way or another, a coming of age story. Look at some of the most popular recent books that I would classify as contemporary/realistic:

SWEETHEARTS by Sara Zarr: The only boy a girl ever loved disappeared and she thought he was dead, until she gets a mysterious message.
13 REASONS WHY by Jay Asher: After a classmate’s suicide, the boy who had a crush on her must put together what happened with thirteen cassette tapes that show up on his doorstep, tapes she sent before her death.
BACK WHEN YOU WERE EASIER TO LOVE by Emily Wing Smith (coming Spring 2011 from Dutton): A girl’s hipster boyfriend up and leaves their conservative Utah town, and she follows him, part of her still thinking they’ll pick up where they left off.
PAPER TOWNS by John Green: A boy follows a trail of mysterious clues left by the alluring neighborhood girl who disappeared one day.
LIVING DEAD GIRL by Elizabeth Scott: A girl kidnapped and trapped by a monster of a man has to find hope and sanity and, finally, escape.
SORTA LIKE A ROCK STAR by Matthew Quick: An upbeat, spiritual girl hides the fact that she’s homeless while helping everyone else with their problems, until her mother dies and she can’t hide anymore.
WINTERGIRLS by Laurie Halse Anderson: After anorexia killed her best friend, a girl has to struggle with whether or not she, too, will succumb to the disease that still has its hooks in her.

Two recent contemporary/realistic books with a fantasy element:

IF I STAY by Gayle Forman: A girl left in a coma after a horrendous accident that kills her family must decide between following them and living without them. (There’s also a huge romantic element here.)
BEFORE I FALL by Lauren Oliver: A girl killed in a car accident gets the chance to relive her last day in order to try and change her fate.

What sets all of these books apart, in my mind, is character, voice, and one high-concept element in the plot that makes the premise a great read. I do think a romantic element, or at least an unrequited crush, is vital to a contemporary/realistic YA story…teens care more about friendships and the possibility of romance than they do about most other things in their lives. Other than that, character, voice, and a high-concept idea are what will really make the difference in this market.

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Should You Get an MFA?

October 27, 2010 in Advice, Publishing, Workshop, Writing | 49 comments

I have been meaning to tackle MFA programs for longer than I’ve had the blog. Tons of writers have asked me: is it worth it to get an MFA? Does that catch your eye in a query? Is the actual curriculum going to take my writing to the next level?

As many of you know, I recently completed my MFA. Before I can speak about the MFA experience in general, I have to speak about my MFA experience, which was not altogether positive. I mean no disrespect to the hard-working directors, professors, advisers, and students at the University of San Francisco. However, I want to be truthful. And the truth is, I often felt like a pariah in my program on two counts: as a children’s writer and as a publishing industry insider.

First, there were a lot of people there (all writing serious adult fiction) who didn’t get children’s books. My first workshop started with someone saying: “Well, I never expected profundity from a children’s manuscript.” (There were a few genre writers in the program who, I think, got a bit of the same snobby treatment because they weren’t writing literary fiction.) That’s fine, though. There’s a well-known bias against kidlit in adult literary circles and I don’t waste my time defending my profession to people who don’t know what they’re talking about.

Second, though, and more problematic, is that I worked in publishing and concerned myself with ideas of marking and audience and sales hooks and all that unsavory business. People were very quick to brand me a corporate sellout. More on that later.

While I did have trouble fitting in, for the above reasons, I can say that I found workshop useful and that I met one of my dear mentors through the program. I also either started or finished several manuscripts over the course of the two-year MFA, and improved with each one. How much of this was the program and how much was it my growing experience in agenting and publishing? Hard to say. How much of it was the MFA and how much of it was my own writing habits? Also hard to say.

One of my issues with MFA programs is that it seems like a lot of students go there and buy the scaffolding to allow themselves to finish a manuscript. I’m the opposite, and ridiculously self-driven. I’d written something like four manuscripts and gotten an agent before entering the program, so I couldn’t relate to the majority of students who seemed to be there to finish a book for the first time in their lives. A lot of people work well under pressure or deadline, and most of my peers seemed to be paying for the experience of a structured, two-year plan to finish. If you’re having problems executing a book, this might actually be the perfect fit for you: a completed manuscript is the “thesis” of most MFA programs, it’s a graduation requirement.

Another issue is that the professors and directors treat the MFA as an artistic cocoon. Writers are there to write and think about art and craft (which is great, don’t get me wrong), but the program doesn’t teach the industry or the business…you know, all the stuff that, ideally, happens after you finish your magnum opus. I think it’s perfectly fair to focus on the gestation of the manuscript during the MFA, but the truth is, the publishing industry exists, and it’s a business. And no matter how much (the majority of) the students rant and rave against traditional publication, I know most of them are interested in actually getting their work published, paid for, and read widely.

Not only is industry talk relegated to one dreary afternoon — the “Life After the MFA” workshop — but it’s actually frowned upon in the classroom and socially. I asked one of my advisers, point blank: “How many of our alums actually get their books published?” She frowned and said: “Not many.” Nobody is going to pay back their student loans with their contributor’s copies from the Small Time Literary Review (the only payment you get from most journals and magazines), but a lot of MFA students act as if this is the right and noble thing to do. The tortured/starving/pissed-off artisté cliche is alive and well. Lots of MFA alums have told me that the exact same vibe exists across the country.

My beef with MFA programs isn’t really what happens during them — all that focus on craft and writing is a beautiful thing — but what happens after. There’s precious little information about publishing to guide your next steps, and not a lot of empathy for those dreaming of publication with a big house. A lot of students in my program actually come back and audit classes after graduation to feel the community of the MFA again, since it’s the first time they’ve had a critique group or felt like a real writer. The same students who need a MFA program to finish a book are also relying on their MFA program to be their only workshop opportunity, their legitimacy. And that’s an expensive way to learn how to write a manuscript. Last I checked, anyone can form a critique group, it’s just a matter of initiative and a little elbow grease to find the right people. I was in a critique group before and after my MFA, so the idea of workshop wasn’t totally revolutionary to me, either.

But if MFA programs had to start tallying up their publication stats — much like undergraduate universities advertise their job placement percentages for recent grads — a lot of them would be in trouble. Because for most programs, the stats aren’t good. The truth is, an MFA does not guarantee publication, because nobody and nothing in life (except worldwide celebrity) can guarantee a book deal. So MFA faculty and directors have taken the focus entirely off publication and put it on the writing journey. That way, the MFA process itself is fulfilling because there’s not quantifiable end goal. There’s no pressure. I totally get where the MFA programs are coming from with this. But I still think it’s detrimental to the writers, who now have two years of fuzzy writerly feelings and no idea what to do next.

To tell you the whole, honest truth: seeing that you have an MFA in a query letter doesn’t really impress me, unless you went to a really high-profile school. I’ve read the writing coming out of my MFA program and some of the work from second year students wasn’t much better than what I see from rank beginners in my slush. I’m not trying to be mean, at all. But I judge writing professionally, every day, and most of the work I saw wouldn’t pass muster.

I do wonder if I would’ve had the same experience if I’d gone to a program specifically targeted to children’s writers. If I could go back in time, I’d probably apply to Vermont (website). There are other programs that have MFA programs for children’s writers. Hamline (website), Simmons (website) and the New School (website) come to mind. Though, to be honest, I don’t know if I’d get an MFA if I had it to do all over. I’m not sure the whole experience — the nitty gritty writing mixed with the high-brow attitude — is a fit for me, as a person.

At the end of the day, I think I’ve learned so much more about writing by simply working in the industry than I ever did in the classroom. I also learned a whole lot by reading, and not just the same old short stories that seem to be part of every writing curriculum. I mean reading in my chosen genre, thousands and thousands of books above and beyond what I was assigned, because that’s just what I do. I know my approach (work in publishing, become an agent, read thousands of books) isn’t realistic for everyone, but since I started in publishing at the same time that I started my MFA, I can’t tell which influence is really responsible for what I know now. I am a better writer than I was two years ago (in all my spare time — ha!), but I think that came from a wide mix of experiences, not the least of which is putting my butt in the seat and actually, you know, writing.

If I was running my own program — and several agents and I have discussed this fantasy because we get frustrated with the output from today’s MFA programs — I’d run a mix of MFA and MBA, much like suggested in this cheeky little article that I found this morning.

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The Early Reader and Chapter Book Market

October 22, 2010 in Publishing, Writing | 20 comments

This question about a little-explored market on the blog comes from Mary:

I have a PB manuscript that I’m thinking of turning into a chapter book. I’ve noticed that I haven’t seen many agents listing chapter books as their interest. Do agents represent CBs or is it best to approach editors directly? Also, is it difficult to sell a CB as a single title, or are editors mostly interested in series?

I’m going to expand this question to include another little-discussed market, the early reader. The reason I don’t usually talk about early readers or chapter books on the blog is because I don’t really represent them, and neither do a lot of my colleagues. As Mary has noticed, there aren’t a lot of agents hanging out their shingles and asking to see early reader or chapter book submissions.

Before I talk about why that is, I’ll define both markets so we’re on the same page.

Early readers are the earliest “chapter” stories that a kid can get. They’re very short in terms of manuscript length (1,500 words max) but are broken up into either chapters or vignettes that will give the reader the feeling of reading a book with real chapters in it. Your target audience for these is kids ages 4 to 8. Early readers feature a smaller trim size, some the size of or slightly bigger than a paperback novel, and can go from about 32 to 60 pages. The font size is smaller and they feature spot illustrations in either color or black and white instead of full color throughout, like a picture book. Some examples of early readers: LING AND TING: NOT EXACTLY THE SAME by Grace Lin (Little, Brown, 2010), the HarperCollins I Can Read! books, and the Random House Step Into Reading books. You can usually find them on spinner racks in the children’s section of your local independent bookstore. If you’re at all curious, go and get your hands on some. As you’ll see, early readers have strict guidelines for vocabulary and sentence structure and are graded so that kids can develop their reading skills and move up a ladder to more independent reading. Even if you think you have a great early reader idea, it has to be a very precise fit for a publisher’s established vocab/sentence/word count guidelines.

Chapter books are for more independent readers who are making the bridge between picture books and early readers and middle grade. Some bookstores designate these as for kids 9-12 but I would say readers are mostly 6-8. Manuscripts can range from about 5,000 words to about 15,000 words, max. Since your audience is still developing its reading skills, you have more of a wide berth in terms of vocabulary and sentence structure, story and character. Younger chapter books will be simpler, but you can get pretty sophisticated for older chapter books. Trim size resembles paperback books and finished books tend to go from 100 to 160 pages, with black and white spot illustrations throughout. Some of my favorite chapter books are CLEMENTINE by Sarah Pennypacker and illustrated by Marla Frazee, the IVY AND BEAN series, written by Anne Barrows and illustrated by Sophie Blackall from Chronicle Books, and the fun GERONIMO STILTON and THEA STILTON books from Scholastic (in full color!). If you’re at all curious about chapter books, do pick some up and take a look. They’re a very quick read!

Now, the reason I don’t talk about them a lot is because early readers and chapter books are a really tough market right now. Writers have some luck doing I Can Reads or Step Into Reading as work-for-hire for the big publishers, but writers and agents haven’t had a lot of recent success with pitching independent creations and getting an early reader or chapter book series going.

One reason for this? The word I just used: series. If you look at an early reader or even a chapter book, you’ll see that their spines are tiny. When you’re fighting for space on early reader or chapter book shelves with DORA THE EXPLORER licensed early reader #798 and 30 of its closest friends, your tiny spine isn’t going to stand out. It’s been proven that series sell better than stand-alones, so that’s where publishers are turning for these markets.

So why don’t publishers give new writers a series? Well, a debut writer is untested and they won’t have a lot of sales power to their name yet. And, truth be told, early readers and chapter books are not lucrative for publishers. These books have very low price points: about $3.99 to $6.99, unless, of course, they’re published in hardcover. Most are published on cheap paper, about the same quality as a mass market paperback (what you’d find in the grocery store checkout aisle). They’re not big profit-turners. And why would a house spend a lot of money and marketing launching a new series from a debut writer when they won’t really stand to gain from it? Cynical, yes, but this sector of the market is very cynical right now.

While early readers and chapter books are a down market right now, they’re not an absolutely closed door. However, writers hoping to tap this market need to be very familiar with language, vocabulary, sentence structure, reading levels, and all the other strict guidelines in effect for these books.

For my money, I think it would be easier to make a debut as a picture book writer in this market. And that’s saying a lot, since picture books aren’t exactly selling like hotcakes, either. I don’t look at submissions for early readers or chapter books unles, of course, someone has the next CLEMENTINE character. As it happens, one of my clients is developing a potential idea for this market (the only way I would really touch it right now), and so I’ve been doing a lot of research lately. These tricky little books are certainly on my mind, but I don’t recommend that they be on yours.

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Trends in Children’s Publishing: A Panel

October 20, 2010 in Events, Publishing | 21 comments

Last night, I had the pleasure of attending a children’s publishing panel with some real industry heavyweights, pictured here from left to right: Rosemary Stimola, literary agent to the stars, Neal Porter, publisher of children’s books for Neal Porter Books and Roaring Brook Press, Meg Cabot, YA author, and Lisa Holton, multimedia publisher of Fourth Story Media. The whole thing was moderated by the delightful Rachel Vail, another YA author.

The topic of discussion was supposed to be “trends in children’s publishing 2010″ but the hour and a half boiled down to two ideas. First, don’t follow trends in writing or publishing because the moment is gone by the time anything becomes a trend (they spent 5 minutes on this). Second, holy-s&*$-the-publishing-world-is-ending-and-wtf-is-with-ebooks-and-we’re-all-gonna-dieeeeeeee!!!!!!!! This sentiment reached a fever pitch, in part, because of the disastrously misguided NYT article a few weeks ago about the death of the picture book. Even though the panelists claimed to be feeling more and more optimistic about the industry after the recession, the audience questions made it clear that most laypeople watching publishing from the sidelines weren’t seeing the silver lining.

Are we right to be optimistic in the times of ebooks and declining literacy? Or are publishing people just in deep denial? To be totally honest, I don’t know. I wrestle with these questions sometimes. And I’m not the only one, clearly. Out of the ten or so questions from the audience, two had to do with whether or not publishing, children’s included, was going up in flames.

ETA: I’d love to echo Cynthia Leitich Smith in the comments, below. Every time I start to freak out for a minute, Andrea just gives me one of her signature stares, smiles, and reminds us all that people were saying all of these things about publishing back in the 70s. As editor Lisa Yoskowitz reminded the audience in Wisconsin this past weekend, the NYT, as a primarily print newspaper, isn’t doing so hot, either, so they could be in, in part, picking on other kids to get the heat off themselves.

In terms of the ebook “threat,” Rosemary made sure to point out — and some writers disagree with this, but I completely enforce this idea — that publishers aren’t printers. They’re purveyors of content. And no matter the platform, whether ebook or printed book or app, people will always need stories, art, and content. “Platforms don’t change the storytelling soul of publishing,” she said. (Read an earlier post of mine about ebooks that deals with some of these issues.)

Neal Porter believes that picture books are a sustainable art form. He says he’s tried to acquire books for purely commercial reasons and always finds it a bit of a disaster. That’s not to say he hasn’t been affected by market changes, though. He now publishes smaller lists and is involved in more marketing and sales meetings with his staff, to make sure he has a hand in the retail/commercial process.

Lisa Holton, formerly of Scholastic and other big publishers, now runs a multi-platform company that is responsible for THE AMANDA PROJECT, an eight-book series for HarperCollins and also an interactive website. It turns out she was the perfect person for this panel, as she had a lot of interesting things to say about ebooks. She says there are two reasons to be excited. First, ebooks and digital platforms give writers and publishers an opportunity to connect directly to readers. Second, everyone has a chance to learn how to market better. (As is, publishers market to their customers. No, a publisher’s customer isn’t the reader, it’s the bookstore or library that will stock and then resell the book.)

Lisa doesn’t think the printed picture book will ever go away. On the one hand, it is a beautiful, pristine thing. On the other, though, new platforms mean new opportunities for illustrators, designers, animators, and developers to take the picture book into new territory. And the two can work in tandem.

But that doesn’t mean we know what we’re talking about or just what those opportunities are yet. Rachel described ebooks and enhanced ebooks (animated, talking, singing etc. books and apps) as the “wild west” of publishing. Funny, I used the exact same phrase at a panel on Sunday in Wisconsin. We don’t 100% know what’s coming or what shape it will take, we just know that we have to be ready for it.

Neal mentioned some concerns about apps. They’re expensive, and so not every book gets one. There are also decisions to be made. Will the app be an advertisement or marketing vehicle for the book, a version of the book, or simply the book itself? Maybe none of these things. Maybe all of them. After all, as Rachel, pictured here, said, kids want a multi-sensory experience. They want to read their book, and then they want to play it, interact with it, take an imaginative leap. The book and the play are all part of how kids meet and interpret a story.

All this uncertainty about ebooks is, of course, daunting. So, is there any truth to the NYT article? Yes, Neal says. There are a lot of mediocre picture books in terms of design, production, and content. Picture books were a heavily published area (as those of you who’ve heard my market overview talk know), and now publishers are scaling back. I’d argue, though, that focus on quality, not quantity, is a good thing for the long run.

Meg dove into the discussion with author’s perspective on marketing in today’s web 2.0 world. Even though it takes a lot of time, she keeps a great blog and interacts with readers via Twitter and Facebook. She says the point of online marketing is to give your readers access and your authentic voice. The worst way to market, she says, and I agree, is to just push your book all the time. Nobody will tune in to that marketing message, especially not kids and teens, who want a more authentic connection to their audience. (As I said in a post about blogging, people want Internet content that’s valuable to them, and self-serving advertisements aren’t usually it…)

Overall, I think the panel delved well into some recent publishing developments. I spend a lot of time thinking about these issues and how they’ll affect the futures of creators, agents, editors, publishers, and readers, past, present, and future. And while the panel itself was short on concrete answers to all these questions about where everything is headed, there is one thing I can say for certain: the people who create and publish children’s books have forged an incredible community, and it was great to come out and feel part of it.

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Guest Post: Censorship In Books

October 15, 2010 in Guest Post, Publishing | 13 comments

Writer Alane Ferguson is a dear friend of mine, and she recently emailed me about an article she’d written. Since I touched on the subject of censorship in my most recent post on sex in YA, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to “reprint” Alane’s piece (which was originally posted on her own blog, here).

***

First of all, I believe not all published work is suited to all readers. There, I said it – to me it’s a simple fact. BUT, having said that, we wade into the murky waters of who decides for whom what is and is not appropriate.

So! I will now weigh in. Remember, this is just my take on the question as an author. (Yikes! I hope when I’m done people won’t pelt my house with olives!)

I’ll begin with little back-story. I may have mentioned earlier on my blog that ALL are welcome in my home, and those are not empty words. I have had teenagers (girls, mostly – although boys have landed here, too!) who have moved in when things have gotten rough, which has translated into hundreds of hours negotiating sticky areas between teens and adults. My conclusion? Let me just say that there is A LOT MORE GOING ON in the lives of young adults than many parents might care to acknowledge. Yes, there are some protected teens who have never heard a swear word, but they are, sadly, a small minority. Most teens I’ve encountered have matured beyond their years. (Another fact: I might not like the way they have walked away from their childhoods too soon, but choices are made apart from my pearls of wisdom. I work from what IS, not from what I wish could be). And having said all of that, it is my belief that banning books won’t change behavior, not in the slightest.

I mean, isn’t that the fear? That a child reading about a certain behavior will suddenly indulge in said behavior themselves? I have never personally witnessed anyone renounce their core beliefs because of some random author’s take on life. Quite the contrary. I’ve found reading is the safest way to explore alternative world views. Personally, I welcome a chance to talk about ‘banned’ subjects, not to preach as much as to listen. To probe into the decisions of a fictional character and discuss fictional consequences enlightens everyone involved. How much safer is it to talk about imaginary pregnancy than to face the real thing?

Now comes a caveat: Parents know their kids, so I invariability bow to their choices and wisdom when it comes to their offspring. If they deem my books (which some have) as too graphic (for some readers they are) then by all means, censor my books from your family! It’s not a problem with me – discretionary reading has my blessing. However, and this is where some people get stuck, the idea of honor goes both ways. Those same parents MUST honor the right of the many to read material they themselves may deem ‘unsuitable.’ I believe we must not allow individualistic sanctions to put the kibosh on a teacher’s/classroom’s/librarian’s choice of material. For me, the few should not control the rest! We’re all about freedom, right? (Man, I feel those olives coming my way…)

Last but not least – one thing life has taught me is that it is impossible to please everyone. Let’s not try. To that end, I am a big believer in offering all sorts of books to all kinds of readers – no judgment! I respect their choices…problem solved! Respecting differing points of view is the key.

So! In my humble opinion, let the few choose NOT to read, allow the many to ENJOY, and let the conversations begin!

***

I really like Alane’s thoughts here. I think that — my own personal values, religion and politics aside — my baseline for these issues boils down to choice and truth. There are people who advocate for banning books on principle, of removing the “threat” from shelves for the “benefit” of everyone. And then there are people who advocate for choice — letting parents, educators, and kids choose what they recommend, teach, and read — but at least making all books available.

I get very uncomfortable with people who take it upon themselves to make decisions for others, who have the ego and the righteousness to think that they know better. Sure, some kids lack the life experience that some adults possess, but that doesn’t mean that more life experience is better or more valid. Our shelves should be allowed to reflect the wild diversity of our world: every person who has lived, and read, and thought, has their own truth and worldview. Each book should be allowed to have the same. In the end, it’s as simple and as complicated as that.

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