PICTURE BOOK APPS: A BRAVE NEW WORLD
An SCBWI SF South Saturday Series Event

Saturday, January 14th, 4-6 pm, First Congregational Church of Palo Alto

Please join us as industry insiders share their experience and wisdom around the explosive new world of picture book apps. Learn about this potential-filled market and find your place in it! A wine and cheese reception will follow the presentations.

Panelists:

Sam Berman, Co-Founder of book app developer Grids Interactive;
Alan Katz (via Skype), children’s picture book author and writer of the book app, Andrew Answers;
Mary Kole, agent at Andrea Brown Literary Agency and blogger

SCBWI members $10 advance/$15 door; Non-members $20 advance/$25 door (join SCBWI to receive the member rate!).

Click here to RSVP!

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Also, I’ll be speaking about picture books and how to write and publish them in a Writer’s Digest webinar on Thursday, January 12th at 1 p.m. Eastern. You can call in or listen to the talk online, in the comfort of your home or office. If you’re not available at the webinar time, you can still register and receive a recorded version of the talk via email next week, once they put all the information together.

I’ve given this picture book webinar once before, so if you’ve already heard the picture book version, this will be the same information. However, new students and returning students alike get a 1,000-word picture book critique from me!

To register for the webinar, click here.

If you want to hear me speak in person, I’ll be appearing at the Writer’s Digest Conference in Midtown NYC from January 20th to the 22nd! I’ll be on an agent panel, will be participating in Saturday afternoon’s agent Pitch Slam, and will have my own talk about children’s writing and the marketplace on Sunday morning. Whew! It will be a busy, busy weekend, but I can’t wait to meet more of you in person. It’s not too late to register for the conference, and you can do so by clicking here.

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Finally, those of you watching the publishing business…what are YOUR publishing predictions for 2012? Other than, of course, you getting one or many steps closer toward your own writing and publishing goals. At least, that’s my prediction for all of you!

Erik Metz
Laura Burdette

Email me your addresses at mary at kidlit dot com!

For the rest of you, it’s still not too late to treat yourself or the kidlit writer and/or illustrator in your life to this fantastic, info-packed book. It makes great pampering for yourself or a fabulous gift for others…or both. And don’t forget to review it on Amazon and Goodreads!

1. Your genre (ie: fantasy, paranormal, realistic, historical, etc.)
2. Your audience (ie: picture book, MG, YA, etc.)
3. A little about your manuscript (practice your one-line “elevator pitch”)
4. What you want out of the experience (a critique of your XX,000-word mss., someone to read your first 3 chapters, help with your query letter, etc.)
5. Your email address for potential partners to contact you (I’d type it in the following format: mary at kidlit dot com, so that you avoid spam bots.)

Only post a comment for this entry if you are looking for a critique partner.

In other news, I am going to take a Blogcation the last two weeks of December and the first week of January, (Dec 19 to Jan 6) so there will be no new stuff on here during those three weeks on any of my blahblahblogs. However, I’ll ramp up my “From the archives” Tweets, so if you’re not following me on Twitter and Facebook, click those links and do so. I often pull out old articles that are still just as pertinent to writing and publishing as they were when I wrote them and broadcast the links to those who may not have been readers yet. I’ve got a blog full of material from early 2009 on, so there are a lot of posts to peruse!

Meanwhile, I leave you with two of my favorite web comics. The first is about a common writing error and, if you haven’t seen it, you might want to check your pulse as you could very well be a ghost. I present, the Alot. (I often have to physically restrain myself from sending this link to people who make this mistake to me in email.)

The other perfectly encapsulates the existential malaise of social networking and building platform. You can find this “it’s funny because it’s true” bit of wisdom here. (Speaking of which, I just wrote about platform a few weeks ago.)

I wish you all the blessings of time spent together with family and friends this holiday season. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a turkey to brine…

Do we want to talk queries? Craft? Publishing? Getting an agent? Anything. Just ask away in the comments.

This fall, I’m embarking upon a bit of an adventure: in two weeks, I will be in Japan, and a little more than a week after that, Hong Kong. This trip is made possible by the amazing SCBWI organization and their international chapters, which are bringing me overseas to talk to their members. Holly, Mio, and the rest of the SCBWI: thank you so much for the opportunity of a lifetime!

Since it’s not every day that you’re invited to speak in such amazing places, I am making the most of my trip and taking about sixteen days to travel and explore. I’ll schedule blog posts for the entire trip — no worries there, it’s like I never left my apartment — but I won’t be able to moderate comments with any regularity.

You’ll still get Twitter and Facebook updates about new posts and featured content from the archives, but I won’t be able to check in via social networking much because I’ll be making the most of my travels and spending as little time online as possible. Email questions will also, as you can guess, go on the back burner.

That said, I should have some great articles for you in the pipeline, including an interview with a rogue author/innovative book marketer/dear friend. Stay tuned for that and more! And be nice…it’ll take me a few days to get back into the swing of things when I return in the first half of November.

Some of my more astute readers have probably also noticed that I’ve let my other two blogs, Chowlit and Kidlit Apps, grow weeds and gather dust. NO MORE! It turns out that juggling three blogs and blogging every day across all of them is something I’m terrible at. The more I try to shove myself into a hectic schedule like that, the more I start to resent blogging, and I never want that to happen.

So instead, I’m implementing the following (much more merciful) schedule:

Monday: Kidlit
Every even Tuesday: Kidlit Apps
Every oddTuesday: Chowlit
Wednesday: Kidlit

Now that’s something I can stick to! And let this be a lesson to all you blogging writers…consistency is better, even if your posts are spaced further apart, than flipping out and ditching your blogs altogether and leaving people to wonder if you’ve dropped off the face of the planet. The former looks classy — like you’re taking your time to come up with really good stuff — and the latter looks spazzy. See? Not even I’m immune to blogging blunders.

Finally, there’s a super secret, super awesome development afoot for most of the winter and into the spring. Cue the mysterious music and dramatic lighting. All shall be revealed in time! Dun dun DUN…

So instead of trying to force any analysis, I will drop the names of the finalists and then dissect their work and pick a WINNER on Wednesday. First, let me thank everyone who commented and shared their work. Such a supportive community! So much great feedback! Here are the first lines that caught my eyes from those submitted:

Crystal
Silvia
Lyla
Stephanie Garber
Kathryn
Amy D.
Kayla Olson
Karen O’Donnell
Kait Nolan
Ashley E.
Miles

So before we move on to successful first lines from the published shelves, I thought I’d give you all an opportunity to critique and get critiqued by other writers based on your first line. Here’s what you have to do:

1. Read and comment on three (3) first lines in the comments (this obviously doesn’t apply to the first handful of people to leave theirs).
2. Post your own first line and tell us if it’s a picture book, MG, YA, whatever.
3. When you’re responding to the first lines of others, make sure they know that you’re talking to them. I usually put their name and some dashes. Unfortunately, these comments aren’t threaded to do replies, so it will be a bit of a mess.
4. Check back and scroll through comments to see if anyone has commented on your work.
5. I will pop in occasionally and pick out a few to critique. The first line with the most comments about it will get a first page (250 word) critique from me!

I love it when my readers tell me what they need, when they just jump in and start a conversation.

ETA: I will be by the site a few times today to approve comments. If you haven’t commented before, your comment will be held for moderation. I’ll release them when I can. But don’t worry — your comment was received, it’s just waiting on me. No need to comment again.

The webinar is Thursday, July 28th at 1 p.m. Eastern. Even if you can’t make that time, it will be recorded and you can listen to it after the fact. You will still get a critique from me and the valuable information all about picture books that I plan on divulging during the presentation.

Register for it by clicking here and tell all your PB friends! For those of you who are writing for older readers, I’ll be doing a special YA webinar in September, so keep your eyes peeled for that!

If you want a bundle of great information on writing for kids and teens — including access to one of my previous webinars, the CHILDREN’S WRITERS AND ILLUSTRATORS MARKET book, issues of Writer’s Digest, and craft books — check out the Writer’s Digest July Kit of the Month, available only while supplies last!

KENYA:

On July 8, 2011, members of the LitWorld team are headed to Kenya to visit our partners at the Children of Kibera Foundation. LitWorld works very closely with the Children of Kibera Foundation’s Red Rose School, where we run programs such as the Girls Clubs for Literacy Project. The Red Rose School is a beacon of hope for the children of Kibera, and is a positive learning environment providing education for children who are HIV/AIDS orphans.

HARLEM:

Starting this summer, LitWorld will set up the Story Power Camp project, a summer reading enrichment program for the youth of the Children’s Village, Polo Grounds Community Center. The Story Power Camp aims to engage young people in reading and writing through fun, interactive activities, while encouraging each participant to boldly share their personal stories. The Children’s Village works in partnership with families to help society’s most vulnerable children so that they become educationally proficient, economically productive and socially responsible members of their communities.

To contribute, view their wishlist via Amazon here (donations are being accepted until 6/30/2011): http://tinyurl.com/litworlddrive