How I Sold My First Children's Book

An unexpected way into children's literature.

There’s a saying in Hollywood: There’s the way you’re supposed to make it, and the way everybody actually made it.

The same could easily be true of kidlit. The way it’s supposed to work is you submit your work to an editor or agent, they call you back and your book is sold. That’s it – clean, simple, wipe your hands and start your next book.

But not so fast. Consider these three.

• Mo Willems went and won six Emmy’s as a writer for Sesame Street. That got him an agent. Two-and-a-half years later, he (and the Pigeon) had a book deal. That’s nearly two Emmy’s for every year he had to wait!
• Jon Sciezska got thirty rejections for his first picture book. Then he found out his wife worked with the wife of an illustrator – Lane Smith. Lane agreed to illustrate his book, and one of the editors he’d already sent it to now decided she liked it. I can’t tell you how many rules were broken here (resubmitting? Having your own illustrator? My God!), but that’s how The True Story of the Three Little Pigs found its way into print.
• Nick Bruel (Bad Kitty) was working in a bookstore when he noticed one woman always coming in and buying children’s books. When he asked her about it, she said she was a children’s literary agent. He said he had some illustrations he’d like to show her. That’s how he got his agent. No conferences, no referrals, no cold submissions. Just a book store and a lot of talent.

The story of how I got my first kidlit publishing contract isn’t so dramatic, but it does show there are other ways in the door. I answered an ad on a website. They said they were looking for writers to write children’s books about celebrities from the ‘40s and ‘50s. They already had Frank Sinatra, but were looking for others.

I thought about this for a while. I figured everyone would pitch Elvis or Marilyn, or maybe Deano to complement Frank. Maybe even the Duke. Who could I pitch that somebody else wouldn’t? Nat King Cole? Buffalo Bob? Trigger the Wonder Horse?

And that’s when it hit me – if there’s one celebrity from that era that children still know, it’s Judy Garland. Shirley Temple had faded, and so had Mickey Rooney. But The Wizard of Oz has kept Judy Garland in front of millions of kids, even today. And that’s how I pitched them.

Seven days later, I was asked to draw up an outline for the book based around the Frank Sinatra model. I did, and four days later, they hired me.

But here’s where it gets really interesting: they wanted three books at three different levels – K-1, 2-3, 4-5. The books were not going to be sold to the public, but were to be distributed to long-term care patients. And it was a flat-fee freelance job with no royalties or advances or future books.

Nothing glamorous. No pigeons driving buses; no wolves setting the record straight, or bad kitties flipping through the alphabet, just three biographies on Judy Garland. But it counts. That’s my entre into children’s publishing, and I’m thrilled to be there. It goes in every query letter I send out – you know, while I’m trying to land that editor or agent. 

Because that’s how you’re supposed to do it…

Even when you’re not.

Matching Your Manuscript to Publisher and Editor

It can be maddening matching your manuscript to the right publisher, and even harder to the right editor. I encountered this again while deciding between two picture books to send a particular publisher, a normally closed house, but one where I managed to meet the editor at a conference.

That doesn't solve my dilemma. This house publishes a lot of easy readers, focusing largely on books for boys. Check. I can do that. But they also love dialogue-friendly stories, and only one of my two choices falls into that category, and it's not, by definition, and easy reader. None of the usual repetitive phrases that drive home a point and teach word structure and usage. I could be splitting the difference here, but, as always, I want to get this choice right.

It may come down to a gut choice, or even, as sometimes happens, the one with the best pitch – in this case, the story told entirely in dialogue and illustrations. Unfortunately, the other one is probably a better piece. Ahh, the dilemma!*

In the meantime, while I pore over details a five year old won't use to decide his favorite story (but that are still very important to make everything just right), here's a list of considerations when picking a publisher or editor to pitch.

Submitting to a Publisher

1. Do they publish authors you like? Probably the most common trick, but one often overlooked. Find out who publishes your favorite author.
2. Are there similarities between your work and theirs? Just because they publish your favorite author, do they publish work like yours? That is, is your work really similar to your favorite authors’? I love Faulkner, but I don’t write what he wrote. Find work similar in theme, style, voice, etc., and approach those publishers.
3. What to they publish most? A big house may publish everything, a small house a select line. Just because they publish everything from board books to young adult doesn’t mean they don’t have a preference.
4. Books for Boys or Girls? Are there more boy books or girl books? Most houses publish some of both and certain books can be for either, but is there more of one than the other?
5. Age range? Sure picture books are for younger children than middle grade and so on, but even those genres are divided into ever-increasing niche markets. Is your middle grade for 8-12 year olds or 10-14 year olds? Is your YA for 13-16 or 15-18, and so on. Even picture books can 2-6 or 4-8. Marketing has been doing this for years; publishing has caught up.
6. Voice? Are most stories first person or third? Dialogue or text heavy? Present tense or past? Male or female narrator? Clipped sentences or lengthy literature? Try to match up wherever you can. Don't change your style to match theirs. After all, you need an original voice or you'll never get published. You just want to be close to a given house's history

And with that said, stick to what they've published in the past few years. Publishing, like the digital world, is getting a shorter history. Two years can be out of date.

Submitting to an Editor

Once you have a publisher or two picked out, you'll need to submit to a particular editor. Sending it to Dear Editor is a sure trip to the bottom of the slush pile. The very bottom. Of course, particular editors have particular tastes. Agents know these and follow these, but like researching a publisher, you have to rely on old-fashioned leg work (and by old-fashioned I mean the Internet). Find interviews with them, blogs they write, tweets they send, podcasts they've joined, and most importantly, conferences. Some editors are virtually anonymous on the web, but most do conferences and they come with one important answer:

“So what are you looking for?”

They hear it a hundred times. They have an answer prepared. When you approach them, be prepared, too. Explain why you think your work is right for them. Do your homework!

And good luck.

*Briefly discussed in my post Balzer and Bray on the Brain