Write a Children's Book

Archive for the ‘Writing Children's Books’ Category

As you skim through other people’s children’s books, jot down any thoughts and ideas that you may get – these will certianly help you focus on points when are writing a children’s book of your own. You should make notes of any experiences that you might remember from when you were younger that you could include in your book. This is because everyone loves a story, so no matter what the subject area your children’s book covers, include you own anecdotes. For example, if your were writing for adults, perhaps creating a new diet book, you would want to include funny / informative stories about your own experiences with diets or the experiences of your friends. This can be used the same way for when writing a children’s book.

You may want to use fictitious names to protect people’s privacy. You will definitely need to use fictitious names if you can’t contact people to ask them for permission to use a story or if you think there’s a change that people will be able to recognize themselves from a story you tell that might put them in a bad light.

However, you should definitely take into consideration your own past experiences, when writing a children’s book.

If you’re feeling nervous now that you’re about to start writing children’s books, relax. Tell yourself that you will take it step by step. All you need to do is work at it steadily. Write a word, a sentence and paragraph at a time, and you will complete your proposal. Once you have sold your proposal, you’ll complete your book using the same easy-does-it method.

Let’s dispel a few myths.

Myth One: Writing children’s books takes a special talent.

It takes persistence. That is the key. There are as many different kinds of writers as there are people in the world. Some are young, some are elderly, many are in-between. You don’t need any special talent to write books nor do you need to be highly educated. Many successful writers have never completed high school. If you can write well enough to write a letter, you can write a book, and certainly try writing children’s books.

Myth Two: Writers starve in garrets.

Many professional writers make incomes that would make doctors and lawyers envious. Most make reasonable incomes. If you decide to make a career of writing non-fiction books for example, the major benefit is that if you choose your book’s topic with extra care, your book can stay in print for many years. For each year that your book is in print, you get two royalty checks. Let’s say that you write two books a year for five years. At the end of the five years, if your books all stay in print, you’ll be getting ten royalty checks a year. These ongoing royalties are your nest-eggs, your profitable investments in your future.

Myth Three: It’s hard to sell a book.

As long as you research the market for each book before you write as much as a single word, it’s easy to sell a book. Publishers need competent, reliable writers who can produce good books regularly. This myth got started because… well let’s be blunt here, 99 per cent of submissions to editors and publishers are not publishable.

Myth Four: You need to know someone to get a book published

You need to write a good book to get published. That really is all you need to know. If you have a contact in publishing, by all means use that contact. However, it’s not necessary. Publishing is a big business and publishers need good books.

The bottom line?

If you really want to start writing children’s book, you just have to get on and try it.